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Roving East and Roving West

E.V. Lucas

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Title: Roving East and Roving West

Author: E.V. Lucas

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ROVING EAST

AND

ROVING WEST

E. V. LUCAS

E. L. L.

MY HOST AT RAISINA

"Yes, Sir, there are two objects of curiosity,

e.g., the Christian world and the Mahometan

world."--DR. JOHNSON.

"Motion recollected in tranquillity."--WORDSWORTH (_very nearly_).

CONTENTS

INDIA

NOISELESS FEET

THE SAHIB

THE PASSING SHOW

INDIA'S BIRDS

THE TOWERS OF SILENCE

THE GARLANDS

DELHI

A DAY'S HAWKING

NEW, OR IMPERIAL, DELHI

THE DIVERS

THE ROPE TRICK

AGRA AND FATEHPUR-SIKRI

LUCKNOW

A TIGER

THE SACRED CITY

CALCUTTA

ROSE AYLMER

JOB AND JOE

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EXIT

JAPAN

INTRODUCTORY

THE LITTLE LAND

THE RICE FIELDS

SURFACE MATERIALISM

FIRST GLIMPSE OF FUJI

TWO FUNERALS

THE LITTLE GEISHA

MANNERS

THE PLAY

MYANOSHITA

FUJI

AMERICA

DEMOCRACY AT HOME

SAN FRANCISCO

ROADS GOOD AND BAD

UNIVERSITIES, LOVE AND PRONUNCIATION

FIRST SIGNS OF PROHIBITION

R. L. S.

STORIES AND HUMORISTS

THE CARS

CHICAGO

THE MOVIES

THE AMERICAN FACE

PROHIBITION AGAIN

THE BALL GAME

SKY SCRAPERS

A PLEA FOR THE AQUARIUM

ENGLISH AND FRENCH INFLUENCES

SKY-SIGNS AND CONEY ISLAND

THE PRESS

TREASURES OF ART

MOUNT VERNON

VERS LIBRE

DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE

BOSTON

PHILADELPHIA

GENERAL REFLECTIONS

INDEX

INDIA

NOISELESS FEET

Although India is a land of walkers, there is no sound of footfalls.

Most of the feet are bare and all are silent: dark strangers overtake

one like ghosts.

Both in the cities and the country some one is always walking. There are

carts and motorcars, and on the roads about Delhi a curious service of

camel omnibuses, but most of the people walk, and they walk ever. In the

bazaars they walk in their thousands; on the long, dusty roads, miles

from anywhere, there are always a few, approaching or receding.

It is odd that the only occasion on which Indians break from their walk

into a run or a trot is when they are bearers at a funeral, or have an

unusually heavy head-load, or carry a piano. Why there is so much piano-

carrying in Calcutta I cannot say, but the streets (as I feel now) have

no commoner spectacle than six or eight merry, half-naked fellows,

trotting along, laughing and jesting under their burden, all with an

odd, swinging movement of the arms.

One of one's earliest impressions of the Indians is that their hands are

inadequate. They suggest no power.

Not only is there always some one walking, but there is always some one

resting. They repose at full length wherever the need for sleep takes

them; or they sit with pointed knees. Coming from England one is struck

by so much inertness; for though the English labourer can be lazy enough

he usually rests on his feet, leaning against walls: if he is a land

labourer, leaning with his back to the support; if he follows the sea,

leaning on his stomach.

It was interesting to pass on from India and its prostrate philosophers

with their infinite capacity for taking naps, to Japan, where there

seems to be neither time nor space for idlers. Whereas in India one has

continually to turn aside in order not to step upon a sleeping figure--

the footpath being a favourite dormitory--in Japan no one is ever doing

nothing, and no one appears to be weary or poor.

India, save for a few native politicians and agitators, strikes one as a

land destitute of ambition. In the cities there are infrequent signs of

progress; in the country none. The peasants support life on as little as

they can, they rest as much as possible and their carts and implements

are prehistoric. They may believe in their gods, but fatalism is their

true religion. How little they can be affected by civilisation I learned

from a tiny settlement of bush-dwellers not twenty miles from Bombay,

close to that beautiful lake which has been transformed into a

reservoir, where bows and arrows are still the only weapons and rats are

a staple food. And in an hour's time, in a car, one could be telephoning

one's friends or watching a cinema!

THE SAHIB

I did not have to wait to reach India for that great and exciting moment

when one is first called "Sahib." I was addressed as "Sahib," to my

mingled pride and confusion, at Marseilles, by an attendant on the

steamer which I joined there. Later I grew accustomed to it, although

never, I hope, blase; but to the end my bearer fascinated me by alluding

to me as Master--not directly, but obliquely: impersonally, as though it

were some other person that I knew, who was always with me, an _alter

ego_ who could not answer for himself: "Would Master like this or

that?" "At what time did Master wish to be called?"

And then the beautiful "Salaam"!

I was sorry for the English doomed to become so used to Eastern

deference that they cease to be thrilled.

THE PASSING SHOW

It is difficult for a stranger to India, especially when paying only a

brief visit, to lose the impression that he is at an exhibition--in a

section of a World's Fair. How long it takes for this delusion to wear

off I cannot say. All I can say is that seven weeks are not enough. And

never does one feel it more than in the bazaar, where movement is

incessant and humanity is so packed and costumes are so diverse, and

where the suggestion of the exhibition is of course heightened by the

merchants and the stalls. What one misses is any vantage point--anything

resembling a chair at the Cafe de la Paix in Paris, for instance--where

one may sit at ease and watch the wonderful changing spectacle going

past. There are in Indian cities no such places. To observe the life of

the bazaar closely and be unobserved is almost impossible.

It would be extraordinarily interesting to sit there, beside some well-

informed Anglo-Indian or Indo-Anglian, and learn all the minutia of

caste and be told who and what everybody was: what the different ochre

marks signified on the Hindu foreheads; what this man did for a living,

and that; and so forth. Even without such an informant I was never tired

of drifting about the native quarters in whatever city I found myself

and watching the curiously leisurely and detached commercial methods of

the dealers--the money lenders reclining on their couches; the pearl

merchants with their palms full of the little desirable jewels; the

silversmiths hammering; the tailors cross-legged; the whole Arabian

Nights pageant. All the shops seem to be overstaffed, unless an element

of detached inquisitiveness is essential to business in the East. No

transaction is complete without a few watchful spectators, usually

youths, who apparently are employed by the establishment for the sole

purpose of exhibiting curiosity.

I picked up a few odds and ends of information, by degrees, but only the

more obvious: such as that the slight shaving of the Mohammedan's upper

lip is to remove any impediment to the utterance of the name of Allah;

that the red-dyed beards are a record that their wearers have made the

pilgrimage to Mecca; that the respirator often worn by the Jains is to

prevent the death of even a fly in inhalation. I was shown a Jain woman

carefully emptying a piece of wood with holes in it into the road, each

hole containing a louse which had crawled there during the night but

must not be killed. The Jains adore every living creature; the Hindus

chiefly the cow. As for this divinity, she drifts about the cities as

though they were built for her, and one sees the passers-by touching

her, hoping for sanctity or a blessing. A certain sex inequality is,

however, only too noticeable, and particularly in and about Bombay,

where the bullock cart is so common--the bullock receiving little but

blows and execration from his drivers.

The sacred pigeon is also happy in Bombay, being fed copiously all day

long; and I visited there a Hindu sanctuary, called the Pingheripole,

for every kind of animal--a Home of Rest or Asylum--where even pariah

dogs are fed and protected.

I was told early of certain things one must not do: such as saluting

with the left hand, which is the dishonourable one of the pair, and

refraining carefully, when in a temple or mosque, from touching anything

at all, because for an unbeliever to touch is to desecrate. I was told

also that a Mohammedan grave always gives one the points of the compass,

because the body is buried north and south with the head at the north,

turned towards Mecca. The Hindus have no graves.

In India the Occidental, especially if coming from France as I did, is

struck by the absence of any out-of-door communion between men and

women. In the street men are with men, women with women. Most women

lower their eyes as a man approaches, although when the woman is a

Mohammedan and young one is often conscious of a bright black glance

through the veil. There is no public fondling, nothing like the familiar

demonstrations of affection that we are accustomed to in Paris and

London (more so during the War and since) and in New York. Nothing so

offends and surprises the Indian as this want of restraint and shame on

our part, and in Japan I learned that the Japanese share the Indian

view.

It seemed to me that the chewing of the betel-nut is more prevalent in

Bombay than elsewhere. One sees it all over India; everywhere are moving

jaws with red juice trickling; but in Bombay there are more vendors of

the rolled-up leaves and more crimson splashes on pavement and wall. It

is an unpleasant habit, but there is no doubt that teeth are ultimately

the whiter for it. Even though I was instructed in the art of betel-nut

chewing by an Indian gentleman of world-wide fame in the cricket field,

from whom I would willingly learn anything, I could not endure the

experience.

Most nations, I suppose, look upon the dances of other nations with a

certain perplexity. Such glimpses, for example, as I had in America of

the movement known as the Shimmie Shake filled me with alarm, while

Orientals have been known to display boredom at the Russian Ballet.

Personally I adore the Russian Ballet, but I found the Nautch very

fatiguing. It is at once too long and too monotonous, but I dare say

that if one could follow the words of the accompanying songs, or

cantillations, the result might be more entertaining. That would not,

however, improve the actual dancing, in which I was disappointed. In

Japan, on the other hand, I succumbed completely to the odd, hypnotic

mechanism of the Geisha, the accompaniments to which are more varied, or

more acceptable to my ear, than the Indian music. But I shall always

remember the sounds of the distant, approaching or receding, snake-

charmers' piping, heard through the heat, as it so often is on Sundays

in Calcutta. To my inward ear that is India's typical melody; and it has

relationship to the Punch and Judy allurement of our childhood.

It was in Bombay that I saw my first fakir, and in Harrison Road,

Calcutta, my last. There had been so long a series in between that I was

able to confirm my first impression. I can now, therefore, generalise

safely when saying that all these strange creatures resemble a blend of

Tolstoi and Mr. Bernard Shaw. Imagine such a hybrid, naked save for a

loin cloth, and smeared all over with dust, and you have a holy man in

the East. The Harrison Road fakir, who passed on his way along the

crowded pavement unconcerned and practically unobserved, was white with

ashes and was beating a piece of iron as a wayward child might be doing.

He was followed by a boy, but no effort was made to collect alms. It is

true philosophy to be prepared to live in such a state of simplicity.

Most of the problems of life would dissolve and vanish if one could

reduce one's needs to the frugality of a fakir. I have thought often of

him since I returned, in London, to all the arrears of work and duty and

the liabilities that accumulate during a long holiday; but never more so

than when confronted by a Peace-time tailor's bill.

INDIA'S BIRDS

One of the first peculiarities of Bombay that I noticed and never lost

sight of was the kites. The city by day is never without these spies,

these sentries. From dawn to dusk the great unresting birds are sailing

over it, silent and vigilant. Whenever you look up, there they are,

criss-crossing in the sky, swooping and swerving and watching. After a

while one begins to be nervous: it is disquieting to be so continually

under inspection. Now and then they quarrel and even fight: now and then

one will descend with a rush and rise carrying a rat or other delicacy

in its claws; but these interruptions of the pattern are only momentary.

For the rest of the time they swirl and circle and never cease to watch.

Bombay also has its predatory crows, who are so bold that it is unsafe

to leave any bright article on the veranda table. Spectacles, for

example, set up a longing in their hearts which they make no effort to

control. But these birds are everywhere. At a wayside station just

outside Calcutta, in the early morning, the passengers all had tea, and

when it was finished and the trays were laid on the platform, I watched

the crows, who were perfectly aware of this custom and had been

approaching nearer and nearer as we drank, dart swiftly to the sugar

basins and carry off the lumps that remained. The crow, however, is,

comparatively speaking, a human being; the kite is something alien and a

cause of fear, and the traveller in India never loses him. His eye is as

coldly attentive to Calcutta as to Bombay.

It is, of course, the indigenous birds of a country that emphasise its

foreignness far more than its people. People can travel. Turbaned heads

are, for example, not unknown in England; but to have green parrots with

long tails flitting among the trees, as they used to flit in my host's

garden in Bombay, is to be in India beyond question. At Raisina we had

mynahs and the babblers, or "Seven Sisters," in great profusion, and

also the King Crow with his imposing tail; while the little striped

squirrels were everywhere. These merry restless little rodents do more

than run and scamper and leap: they seem to be positively lifted into

space by their tails. Their stripes (as every one knows) came directly

from the hand of God, recording for ever how, on the day of creation, He

stroked them by way of approval.

No Indian bird gave me so much pleasure to watch as the speckled

kingfishers, which I saw at their best on the Jumna at Okhla. They poise

in the air above the water with their long bills pointed downwards at a

right-angle to their fluttering bodies, searching the depths for their

prey; and then they drop with the quickness of thought into the stream.

The other kingfisher--coloured like ours but bigger--who waits on an

overhanging branch, I saw too, but the evolutions of the hovering

variety were more absorbing.

When one is travelling by road, the birds that most attract the notice

are the peacocks and the giant cranes; while wherever there are cattle

in any numbers there are the white paddy birds, feeding on their backs--

the birds from which the osprey plumes are obtained. One sees, too, many

kinds of eagle and hawk. In fact, the ornithologist can never be dull in

this country.

Wild animals I had few opportunities to observe, although a mongoose at

Raisina gave me a very amusing ten minutes. At Raisina, also, the

jackals came close to the house at night; and on an early morning ride

in a motorcar to Agra we passed a wolf, and a little later were most

impudently raced and outdistanced by a blackbuck, who, instead of

bolting into security at the sight or sound of man, ran, or rather,

advanced--for his progress is mysterious and magical--beside us for some

forty yards and then,--with a laugh, put on extra speed (we were doing

perhaps thirty miles an hour) and disappeared ahead. All about Muttra we

dispersed monkeys up the trees and into the bushes as we approached.

Next to the parrots it is the monkeys that most convince the traveller

that he is in a strange tropical land. And the flying foxes. Nothing is

more strange than a tree full of these creatures sleeping pendant by

day, or their silent swift black movements by night.

I saw no snakes wild, but in the Bacteriological Laboratory at Parel in

Bombay, which Lt.-Col. Glen Liston controls with so much zeal and

resourcefulness, I was shown the process by which the antidotes to snake

poisoning are prepared, for dispersion through the country. A cobra or

black snake is released from his cage and fixed by the attendant with a

stick pressed on his neck a little below the head. The snake is then

firmly and safely held just above this point between the finger and

thumb, and a tumbler, with a piece of flannel round its edge, is

proffered to it to bite. As the snake bites, a clear yellow fluid, like

strained honey in colour and thickness, flows into the glass from the

poison fangs. This poison is later injected in small doses into the

veins of horses kept carefully for the purpose, and then, in due course,

the blood of the horses is tapped in order to make the anti-toxin.

Wonderful are the ways of science! The Laboratory is also the

headquarters of the Government's constant campaign against malaria and

guinea worm, typhoid and cholera, and, in a smaller degree, hydrophobia.

But nothing, I should guess, would ever get sanitary sense into India,

except in almost negligible patches.

THE TOWERS OF SILENCE

The Parsees have made Bombay their own, more surely even than the Scotch

possess Calcutta. Numerically very weak, they are long-headed and far-

sighted beyond any Indian and are better qualified to traffick and to

control. All the cotton mills are theirs, and theirs the finest houses

in the most beautiful sites. When that conflict begins between the

Hindus and the Mohammedans which will render India a waste and a

shambles, it is the Parsees who will occupy the high places--until a

more powerful conqueror arrives.

Bombay has no more curious sight than the Towers of Silence, the Parsee

cemetery; and one of the first questions that one is asked is if one has

visited them. But when the time came for me to ascend those sinister

steps on Malabar Hill I need hardly say that my companion was a many

years' resident of Bombay who, although he had long intended to go

there, had hitherto neglected his opportunities. Throughout my travels I

was, it is pleasant to think, in this way the cause of more sightseeing

in others than they might ever have suffered. To give but one other

instance typical of many--I saw Faneuil Hall in Boston in the company of

a Bostonian some thirty years of age, whose office was within a few

yards of this historic and very interesting building, and whose business

is more intimately associated with culture than any other, but who had

never before crossed the threshold.

The Towers of Silence, which are situated in a very beautiful park, with

little temples among the trees and flowers, consist of five circular

buildings, a model of one of which is displayed to visitors. Inside the

tower is an iron grating on which the naked corpses are laid, and no

sooner are they there than the awaiting vultures descend and consume the

flesh. I saw these grisly birds sitting expectantly in rows on the

coping of the towers, and the sight was almost too gruesome. Such is

their voracity that the body is a skeleton in an hour or so. The Parsees

choose this method of dissolution because since they worship fire they

must not ask it to demean itself with the dead; and both earth and water

they hold also too sacred to use for burial. Hence this strange and--at

the first blush--repellant compromise. The sight of the cemetery that

awaits us in England is rarely cheering, but if to that cemetery were

attached a regiment of cruel and hideous birds of prey we should shudder

indeed. Whether the Parsees shudder I cannot say, but they give no sign

of it. They build their palaces in full view of these terrible Towers,

pass, on their way to dinner parties, luxuriously in Rolls-Royces beside

the trees where the vultures roost, and generally behave themselves as

if this were the best possible of worlds and the only one. And I think

they are wise.

Oriental apathy, or, at any rate, unruffled receptiveness, may carry its

owner very far, and yet if these vultures cause no misgivings, no chills

at the heart, I shall be surprised. As for those olive-skinned Parsee

girls, with the long oval faces and the lustrous eyes--how must it

strike them?

It was not till I went to the caves of Elephanta that I saw vultures in

their marvellous flight. It is here that they breed, and the sky was

full of them at an incredible distance up, resting on their great wings

against the wind, circling and deploying. At this height they are

magnificent. But seen at close quarters they are horrible, revolting. On

a day's hunting which I shall describe later I was in at the death of a

gond, or swamp-deer, at about noon, and we returned for the carcase

about three hours later, only to find it surrounded by some hundreds of

these birds tearing at it in a kind of frenzy of gluttony. They were not

in the least disconcerted by our approach, and not until the bearers had

taken sticks to them would they leave. The heavy half-gorged flapping of

a vulture's wings as it settles itself to a new aspect of its repast is

the most disgusting sight I have seen.

To revert to the Towers of Silence, one is brought very near to death

everywhere in the East. We have our funeral corteges at home, with

sufficient frequency, but they do not emphasize the thought of the

necessary end of all things as do the swathed corpses that one meets so

often being carried through the streets, on their way to this or that

burning place. In Bombay I met several every day, with their bearers and

followers all in white, and all moving with the curious trot that seems

to be reserved for such obsequies. There were always, also, during my

stay, new supplies of fire-wood outside the great Hindu burning ground

in Queen's Road; and yet no epidemic was raging; the city was normal

save for a strike of mill-hands. It is true that I met wedding parties

almost equally often; but in India a wedding party is not, as with us, a

suggestion of new life to replace the dead, for the brides so often are

infants.

One of the differences between the poor of London and the poor of India

may be noticed here. In the East-End a funeral is considered to be a

failure unless its cost is out of all proportion to the survivors'

means, while a wedding is a matter of a few shillings; whereas in India

a funeral is a simple ceremony, to be hurried over, while the wedding

festivities last for weeks and often plunge the family into debts from

which they never recover.

THE GARLANDS

The selective processes of the memory are very curious. It has been

decreed that one of my most vivid recollections of Bombay should be that

of the embarrassment and half-amused self-consciousness of an American

business man on the platform of the railway station for Delhi. Having

completed his negotiatory visit he was being speeded on his way by the

native staff of the firm, who had hung him with garlands like a

sacrificial bull. In the Crawford Market I had watched the florists at

work tearing the blossoms from a kind of frangipani known as the Temple

Flower, in order to string them tightly into chains; and now and again

in the streets one came upon people wearing them; but to find a shrewd

and portly commercial American thus bedecked was a shock. As it

happened, he was to share my compartment, and on entering, just before

the train started, he apologised very heartily for importing so much

heavy perfume into the atmosphere, but begged to be excused because it

was the custom of the country and he didn't like to hurt anyone's

feelings. He then stood at the door, waving farewells, and directly the

line took a bend flung the wreaths out of the window. I was glad of his

company, for in addition to these floral offerings his Bombay associates

had provided him with a barrel of the best oranges that ever were grown

--sufficient for a battalion--and these we consumed at brief intervals

all the way to Delhi.

DELHI

"If you can be in India only so short a time as seven weeks," said an

artist friend of mine--and among his pictures is a sombre representation

of the big sacred bull that grazes under the walls of Delhi Fort--"why

not stay in Delhi all the while? You will then learn far more of India

than by rushing about." I think he was right, although it was not

feasible to accept the advice. For Delhi has so much; it has, first and

foremost, the Fort; it has the Jama Masjid, that immense mosque where on

Fridays at one o'clock may be seen Mohammedans of every age wearing

every hue, thousands worshipping as one; it has the ancient capitals

scattered about the country around it; it has signs and memories of the

Mutiny; it has delectable English residences; and it has the Chadni

Chauk, the long main street with all its curious buildings and crowds

and countless tributary alleys, every one of which is the East

crystallised, every one of which has its white walls, its decorative

doorways, its loiterers, its beggars, its artificers, and its defiance

of the bogey, Progress.

Another thing: in January, Delhi, before the sun is high and after he

has sunk, is cool and bracing.

But, most of all, Delhi is interesting because it was the very centre of

the Mogul dominance, and when one has become immersed in the story of

the great rulers, from Babar to Aurungzebe, one thinks of most other

history as insipid. Of Babar, who reigned from 1526 to 1530, I saw no

trace in India; but his son Humayun (1530-1556) built Indrapat, which is

just outside the walls of Delhi, and he lies close by in the beautiful

mausoleum that bears his name. Humayun's son, Akbar (1556-1605),

preferred Agra to Delhi; nor was Jahangir (1605-1627), who succeeded

Akbar, a great builder hereabout; but with Shah Jahan (1627-1658),

Jahangir's son, came the present Delhi's golden age. He it was who built

the Jama Masjid, the great mosque set commandingly on a mound and gained

by magnificent flights of steps. To the traveller approaching the city

from any direction the two graceful minarets of the mosque stand for

Delhi. It was Shah Jahan, price of Mogul builders, who decreed also the

palace in the Fort, to say nothing (at the moment) of the Taj Mahal at

Agra; while two of his daughters, Jahanara, and Roshanara, that naughty

Begam, enriched Delhi too, the little pavilion in the Gardens that bear

Roshanara's name being a gem. Wandering among these architectural

delights, now empty and under alien protection, it is difficult to

believe that their period was as recent as Cromwell and Milton. But in

India the sense of chronology vanishes.

After Shah Jahan came his crafty son, Aurungzebe, who succeeded in

keeping his empire together until 1707, and with him the grandeur of the

Grand Moguls waned and after him ceased to be, although not until the

Mutiny was their rule extinguished. As I have just said, in India the

sense of chronology vanishes, or goes astray, and it is with a start

that one is confronted, in the Museum in Delhi Fort, by a photograph of

the last Mogul!

In Bombay, during my wakeful moments in the hottest part of the day, I

had passed the time and imbibed instruction by reading the three

delightful books of the late E. H. Aitken, who called himself "Eha"--

"Behind the Bungalow," "The Tribes on My Frontier" and "A Naturalist on

the Prowl." No more amusing and kindly studies of the fauna, flora and

human inhabitants of a country can have ever been written than these;

and I can suggest, to the domestically curious mind, no better

preparation for a visit to India. But at Raisina, when the cool evenings

set in and it was pleasant to get near the wood fire, I took to history

and revelled in the story of the Moguls as told by many authorities, but

most entertainingly perhaps by Tavernier, the French adventurer who took

service under Aurungzebe. If any one wants to know what Delhi was like

in the seventeenth century during Aurungzebe's long reign, and how the

daily life in the Palace went, and would learn more of the power and

autocracy and splendour and cruelty of the Grand Moguls, let him get

Tavernier's record. If once I began to quote from it I should never

stop; and therefore I pass on, merely remarking that when you have

finished the travels of M. Tavernier, the travels of M. Bernier, another

contemporary French observer, await you. And I hold you to be envied.

The Palace in the Fort is now but a fraction of what it was in the time

of Aurungzebe and his father, but enough remains to enable the

imaginative mind to reconstruct the past, especially if one has read my

two annalists. One of Bernier's most vivid passages describes the Diwan-

i-Am, or Hall of Public Audience, the building to which, after leaving

the modern military part of the Fort, one first comes, where the Moguls

sat in state during a durbar, and painted and gilded elephants, richly

draped, took part in the obeisances. Next comes the Hall of Private

Audiences, where the Peacock Throne once stood. It has now vanished, but

in its day it was one of the wonders of the world, the tails of the two

guardian peacocks being composed of precious stones and the throne

itself being of jewelled gold. It was for this that one of Shah Jahan's

poets wrote an inscription in which we find such lines as--

By the order of the Emperor the azure of Heaven

was exhausted on its decoration....

The world had become so short of gold on account of

its use in the throne that the purse of the Earth

was empty of treasure....

On a dark night, by the lustre of its rubies and pearls

it can lend stars to a hundred skies....

That was right enough, no doubt, but when our poet went on to say,

As long as a trace remains of existence and space

Shah Jahan shall continue to sit on this throne,

we feel that he was unwise. Such pronouncements can be tested. As it

happened, Shah Jahan was destined, very shortly after the poem was

written, to be removed into captivity by his son, and the rest of his

unhappy life was spent in a prison at Agra. On each end wall of the Hall

of Private Audience is the famous couplet,--

If there is a Paradise on the face of the earth,

It is this, Oh! it is this, Oh! it is this.

I think of the garden and palace of Delhi Fort as the loveliest spot in

India. Not the most beautiful, not the most impressive; but the

loveliest. The Taj Mahal has a greater beauty; the ruined city of

Fatehpur-Sikri has a greater dignity; but for the perfection of domestic

regality in design and material and workmanship, this marble home and

mosque and accompanying garden and terrace could not be excelled. After

the Halls of Audience we come to the seraglio and accompanying

buildings, where everything is perfect and nothing is on the grand

scale. The Pearl Mosque could hardly be smaller; and it is as pure and

fresh as a lotus. There is a series of apartments all in white marble

(with inlayings of gold and the most delicately pierced marble gratings)

through which a stream of water used to run (and it ran again at the

Coronation Durbar in 1911, when the Royal Baths were again made to

"function") that must be one of the most magical of the works of man.

Every inch is charming and distinguished. All these rooms are built

along the high wall which in the time of Shah Jahan and his many lady

loves was washed by the Jumna. But to-day the river has receded and a

broad strip of grass intervenes.

A DAY'S HAWKING

One of my best Indian days was that on which Colonel Sir Umar Hayat Khan

took us out a-hawking. Sir Umar is himself something of a hawk--an

impressive figure in his great turban with long streamers, his keen

aquiline features and blackest of hair. All sport comes naturally to

him, whether hunting or shooting, pig-sticking, coursing or falconry;

and the Great War found him with a sportsman's eagerness to rush into

the fray, where he distinguished himself notably.

We found this gallant chieftain in the midst of his retainers on the

further bank of the Jumna, at the end of the long bridge. Here the

plains begin--miles of fields of stubble, with here and there a tree and

here and there a pool or marsh, as far as eye can reach, an ancient

walled city in the near distance being almost the only excrescence.

Between the river and this city was our hunting ground.

With the exception of Sir Umar, two of his friends and ourselves, the

company was on foot; and nothing more like the middle ages did I ever

see. The retainers were in every kind of costume, one having an old pink

coat and one a green; one leading a couple of greyhounds in case we put

up a hare; others carrying guns (for we were prepared for all); while

the chief falconer and his assistants had their hawks on their wrists,

and one odd old fellow was provided with a net, in which a captive live

hawk was to flutter and struggle to attract his hereditary foes, the

little birds, who, deeming him unable to hit back, were to swarm down to

deride and defy and be caught in the meshes.

I may say at once that hawking, particularly in this form, does not give

me much pleasure. There is something magnificent in the flight of the

falcon when it is released and flung towards its prey, but the odds are

too heavy in its favour and the whimperings of the doomed quarry strike

a chill in the heart. We flew our hawks at duck and plovers, and missed

none. Often the first swoop failed, but the deadly implacable pursuer

was instantly ready to swoop again, and rarely was a third manoeuvre

necessary. Man, under the influence of the excitement of the chase, is

the same all the world over, and there was no difference between these

Indians moving swiftly to intervene between the hawk and its stricken

prey and an English boy running to retrieve his rabbit. Their animation

and triumph--even their shouts and cries--were alike.

And so we crossed field after field on our gentle steeds--and no one

admires gentleness in a horse more than I--stopping only to watch

another tragedy of the air, or to look across the river to Delhi and see

the Fort under new conditions. All this country I had so often looked

down upon from those high massive walls, standing in one of the lovely

windows of Shah Jahan's earthly paradise; and now the scene was

reversed, and I began to take more delight in it than in the sport. But

at a pond to which we next came there was enacted a drama so absorbing

that everything else was forgotten, even the heat of the sun.

Upon this pond were three wild-duck at which a falcon was instantly

flown. For a while, however, they kept their presence of mind and

refused to leave the water--diving beneath the surface at the moment

that the enemy was within a foot of them. On went the hawk, in its

terrible, cruel onset, and up came the ducks, all ready to repeat these

tactics when it turned and attacked again. But on one of the party (I

swear it was not I), in order to assist the hawk, firing his gun, two of

the ducks became panic-stricken and left the water, only of course to be

quickly destroyed. It was on the hawk's return journey to the pond to

make sure of the third duck that I saw for the first time in my life--

and I hope the last--the expression on the countenance of these terrible

birds in the execution of their duty: more than the mere execution of

duty, the determination to have no more nonsense, to put an end to

anything so monstrous as self-protection in others; for my horse being

directly in the way, he flew under its neck and for a moment I thought

that he was confusing me with the desired mallard. Nothing more

merciless or purposeful did I ever see.

Then began a really heroic struggle on the part of the victim. He timed

his dives to perfection, and escaped so often that the spirit of

chivalry would have decreed a truce. But blood had been tasted, and, the

desire being for more, the guns were again discharged. Not even they,

however, could divert the duck from his intention of saving his life,

and he dived away from the shot, too.

It was at this moment that assistance to the gallant little bird

arrived--not from man, who was past all decency, but from brother

feathers. Out of a clear sky suddenly appeared two tern, dazzling in

their whiteness, and these did all in their power to infuriate the hawk

and lure him from the water. They flew round him and over him; they

called him names; they said he was a bully and that all of us (which was

true) ought to be ashamed of ourselves; they daunted and challenged and

attacked. But the enemy was too strong for them. A fusillade drove them

off, and once again we were free to consider the case of the duck, who

was still swimming anxiously about, hoping against hope. More shots were

fired, one of the boys waded in with a stick, and the dogs were added to

the assault; and in the face of so determined a bombardment the poor

little creature at last flew up, to be struck down within a few seconds

by the insatiable avenger.

That was the crowning event of the afternoon. Thereafter we had only

small successes, and some very pronounced failures when, as happened

several times, a bird flew for safety through a tree, and the hawk,

following, was held up amid the branches. One of the birds thus to

escape was a blue jay of brilliant beauty. We also got some hares. And

then we loitered back under the yellowing sky, and Sir Umar Hayat Khan

ceased suddenly to be a foe of fur and feathers and became a poet,

talking of sunsets in India and in England as though the appreciation of

tender beauty were his only delight.

NEW, OR IMPERIAL, DELHI

There have been seven Delhis; and it required no little courage to

establish a new one--the Imperial capital--actually within sight of most

of them; but the courage was forthcoming. Originally the position was to

be to the north of the present city, where the Coronation Durbar spread

its canvas, but Raisina was found to be healthier, and it is there, some

five miles to the south-west, that the new palaces are rising from the

rock. Fatehpur-Sikri is the only city with which the New Delhi can be

compared; but not Akbar himself could devise it on a nobler scale.

Akbar's centralising gift and Napoleon's spacious views may be said to

combine here, the long avenues having kinship with the Champs Elysees,

and Government House and the Secretariat on the great rocky plateau at

Raisina corresponding to the palace on Fatehpur-Sikri's highest point.

The splendour and the imagination which designed the lay-out of Imperial

Delhi cannot be over-praised, and under the hands of Sir Edwin Lutyens

and Mr. Herbert Baker some wonderful buildings are coming to life. The

city, since it is several square miles in extent, cannot be finished for

some years, but it may be ready to be the seat of Government as soon as

1924.

As I have said, the old Delhis are all about the new one. On the Grand

Trunk road out of Delhi proper, which goes to Muttra and Agra, you pass,

very quickly, on the left, the remains of Firozabad, the capital of

Firoz Shah in the later thirteenth century. Two or three miles further

on is Indrapat on its hill overlooking the Jumna, surrounded by lofty

walls. It is as modern as the sixteenth century, but is now in ruins. At

Indrapat reigned Humayun, the son of the mighty Babar (who on his

conquering way to Delhi had swum every river in advance of his army) and

the father of the mighty Akbar. I loitered long within Indrapat's

massive walls, which are now given up to a few attendants and an

occasional visitor, and like all the monuments around Delhi are most

carefully conserved under the Act for that purpose, which was not the

least of Lord Curzon's Viceregal achievements. Among the buildings which

still stand, rising from the turf, is Humayun's library. It was here

that he met his end--one tradition relating that he fell in the dark on

his way to fetch a book, and another that his purpose had been less

intellectually amatory.

Another mile and we come, still just beside the Grand Trunk road, to

Humayun's Tomb, which stands in a vast garden where green parrots

continually chatter and pursue each other. There is something very

charming--a touch of the truest civilisation, if civilisation means the

art of living graciously--in the practice of the old Emperors and

rulers, of building their mausoleums during their lifetime and using

them, until their ultimate destiny was fulfilled, as pleasure resorts.

To this enchanting spot came Humayun and his ladies full of life, to be

insouciant and gay. Then, his hour striking, Humayun's happy retreat

became Humayun's Tomb. He died in 1556, when Queen Mary, in England, was

persecuting Protestants. The Tomb is in good repair and to the stranger

to the East who has not yet visited Agra and seen the Taj Mahal (which

has a similar ground plan), it is as beautiful as need be. Humayun's

cenotaph, in plain white marble, is in the very centre. Below, in the

vault immediately beneath it, are his remains. Other illustrious dust is

here, too; and some less illustrious, such as that of Humayun's barber,

which reposes beneath a dome of burning-blue tiles in a corner of the

garden.

From the upper galleries of the Emperor's mausoleum the eye enjoys

various rich prospects--the valley of the Jumna pulsating in the heat,

the walls of the New Delhi at Raisina almost visibly growing, and, to

the north, Delhi itself, with the twin towers of the great mosque over

all. Down the Grand Trunk road, immediately below, are bullock wagons

and wayfarers, and here and there is a loaded camel. Across the road is

a curious little group of sacred buildings whither some of the wayfarers

no doubt are bent on a pilgrimage; for here is the shrine of the Saint

Nizam-ud-din Aulia, who worked miracles during his life and died during

the reign of our Edward II--in 1324.

On visiting his shrine (which involved the usual assumption of overshoes

to prevent our infidel leather from contaminating the floor), we fell,

after evading countless beggars and would-be guides, into the hands of a

kindly old man who pressed handfuls of little white nuts upon us and who

remains in my memory as the only independent Mussulman priest in India,

for he refused a tip. In this respect nothing could be more widely

separated than his conduct and that of the three priests of the Jama

Masjid in Delhi, who, discovering us on the wall, just before the Friday

service began, held up the service for several minutes while they

explained their schedule of gratuities--beginning with ten rupees for

the High Priest--and this after we had already provided for the

attendant who had supplied the overshoes and had led us to the point of

vantage! I thought how amusing it would be if a visitor to an English

cathedral--where money usually has to pass, as it is--were surrounded by

the Dean, Archdeacon, Canons and Minor Canons, with outstretched hands,

and had to buy his way to a sight of the altar, according to the status

of each. The spectacle would be as odd to us, as it must be to the

French or Italians--and even perhaps Americans--to see a demand for an

entrance fee on the Canterbury portals.

Were we to continue on the Grand Trunk road for a few miles, first

crossing a noble Mogul bridge, we should come to a little walled city,

Badapur, where a turning due west leads to another Delhi of the past,

Tughlakabad, and on to yet another, the remains of Lal Kot, where the

famous Minar soars to the sky.

One of the most pleasing effects of the New Delhi is the series of

vistas which the lay-out provides. It has been so arranged that many of

the avenues radiating from the central rock on which Government House

and the Secretariat are being set are closed at their distant ends by

historic buildings. Standing on the temporary tower which marks this

centre one is able to see in a few moments all the ruined cities that I

have mentioned. The Kutb Minar is the most important landmark in the far

south, although the eye rests most lovingly on the red and white

comeliness of the tomb of Safdar Jang in the middle distance--which,

with Humayun's Tomb, makes a triangle with the new Government House.

Within that triangle are the Lodi tombs, marking yet another period in

the history of Delhi, the Lodis being the rulers who early in the

fifteenth century were defeated by Babar.

The Kutb Minar enclosure, which is a large garden, where beautiful

masonry, flowers, trees and birds equally flourish, commemorates the

capture of Delhi by Muhammad bin Sam in 1193, the battle being directed

by his lieutenant, Kutb-ud-din. From that time until the Mutiny in 1857

Delhi was under Mohammedan rule. One of the first acts of the conqueror

was to destroy the Hindu temple that stood here and erect the mosque

that now takes its place, and he then built the great tower known as the

Kutb Minar, or Tower of Victory, which ascends in diminishing red and

white storeys to a height of 235 feet, involving the inquisitive view-

finder in a climb of 379 steps. On the other side of the mosque are the

beginnings of a second tower, which, judging by the size of the base,

was to have risen to a still greater height, but it was abandoned after

150 feet. Its purpose was to celebrate for ever the glory of the Emperor

Ala-ud-din (1296-1316).

In front of the mosque is the Iron Pillar which has been the cause of so

much perplexity both to antiquaries and chemists, and meat and drink to

Sanscrit scholars. The pillar has an inscription commemorating an early

monarch named Chandra who conquered Bengal in the fifth century, and it

must have been brought to this spot for re-erection. But its refusal to

rust, and the purity of its constituents, are its special merits. To me

the mysteries of iron pillars are without interest, and what I chiefly

remember of this remarkable pleasaunce is the exquisite stone carvings

of the ruined cloisters and the green parrots that play among the trees.

THE DIVERS

As we were leaving the Kutb after a late afternoon visit, my host and I

were hailed excitedly by an elderly man whose speech was

incomprehensible, but whose gestures indicated plainly enough that there

was something important up the hill. The line of least resistance being

the natural one in India, we allowed him to guide us, and came after a

few minutes, among the ruins of the citadel of Lal Kot, to one of those

deep wells gained by long flights of steps whither the ladies of the

palaces used to resort in the hottest weather. Evening was drawing on

and the profundities of this cavern were forbiddingly gloomy; nor was

the scene rendered more alluring by the presence of three white-bearded

old men, almost stark naked and leaner than greyhounds, who shivered and

grimaced, and suggested nothing so much as fugitives from the grave.

They were, however, not only alive, but athletically so, being

professional divers who earned an exceedingly uncomfortable living by

dropping, feet first, from the highest point of the building into the

water eighty feet below.

One of them indicating his willingness--more than willingness,

eagerness--to perform this manoeuvre for two rupees, we agreed, and

placing us on a step from which the best view could be had, he fled

along the gallery to the top of the shaft, and after certain preliminary

movements, to indicate how perilous was the adventure, and how chilly

the evening, and how more than worth two rupees it was, he committed his

body to the operations of the law of gravity. We saw it through the

apertures in the shaft on its downward way and then heard the splash as

it reached the distant water, while a crowd of pigeons who had retired

to roost among the masonry dashed out and away. The diver emerged from

the well and came running up the steps towards us, while his companion

scarecrows fled also to the top of the shaft and one after the other

dropped down, too; so that in a minute or so we were surrounded by three

old, dripping men, each demanding two rupees. Useless to protest that we

had desired but one of them to perform: they pursued us into the open,

and even clung to our knees, and of course we paid--afterwards to learn

that one rupee for the lot was a lavish guerdon.

One meets with these divers continually, wherever there is a pool sacred

or otherwise; but some actually leap into the water and do not merely

drop. At the shrine of the Saint Nizam-ud-din, near Humayun's Tomb, I

found them--but there they were healthy-looking youths--and again at

Fatehpur-Sikri. But for this sporadic diving, the wrestling bouts which

are common everywhere, the Nautch and the jugglers, India seems to have

no pastimes.

THE ROPE TRICK

The returning traveller from India is besieged by questioners who want

to know all about the most famous of the jugglers' performances. In this

trick the magician flings a rope into the air, retaining one end in his

hand, and his boy climbs up it and disappears. I did not see it.

AGRA AND FATEHPUR-SIKRI

All the Indian cities that I saw seemed to cover an immense acreage,

partly because every modern house has its garden and compound. In a

country where land is cheap and servants are legion there need be no

congestion, and, so far, the Anglo-Indian knows little or nothing of the

embarrassments of dwellers in New York or London. To every one in India

falls naturally a little faithful company of assistants to oil the

wheels of life--groom, gardener, butler and so forth--and a spacious

dwelling-place to think of England in, and calculate the variable value

of the rupee, and wonder why the dickens So-and-so got his knighthood.

Agra seemed to me to be the most widespreading city of all; but very

likely it is not. In itself it is far from being the most interesting,

but it has one building of great beauty--the Pearl Mosque in the Fort--

and one building of such consummate beauty as to make it a place of

pilgrimage that no traveller would dare to avoid--the Taj Mahal. Whether

or not the Taj Mahal is the most enchanting work of architecture in the

world I leave it to more extensive travellers to say. To my eyes it has

an unearthly loveliness which I make no effort to pass on to others.

The Taj Mahal was built by that inspired friend of architecture, Shah

Jahan, as the tomb of the best beloved of his wives, Arjmand Banu,

called Mumtaz-i-Mahal or Pride of the Palace. There she lies, and there

lies her husband. I wonder how many of the travellers who stand

entranced before this mausoleum, in sunshine and at dusk or under the

moon, and who have not troubled about its history, realise that Giotto's

Tower in Florence is three centuries older, and St. Peter's in Rome

antedates it by a little, and St. Paul's Cathedral in London is only

twenty or thirty years younger. Yet so it is. In India one falls

naturally into the way of thinking of everything that is not of our own

time as being of immense age, if not prehistoric.

Opinions differ as to the respective beauties of Agra Fort and Delhi

Fort, but in so far as the enclosures themselves are considered I give

my vote unhesitatingly to Delhi. Yet when one thinks also of what can be

seen from the ramparts, then the palm goes instantly to Agra, for its

view of the Taj Mahal. It is tragic, walking here, to think of the last

days of Shah Jahan, who brought into being both the marble palace and

the wonderful Moti-Masjid or marble mosque. For in 1658 his son,

Aurungzebe, deposed him and for the rest of his life he was imprisoned

in these walls.

His grandfather, Akbar, the other great Agra builder, was made of

sterner stuff. All Shah Jahan's creations--the Taj, the marble mosque,

the palaces both here and at Delhi, even the great Jama Masjid at

Delhi,--have a certain sensuous quality. They are not exactly decadent,

but they suggest sweetness rather than strength. The Empire had been

won, and Shah Jahan could indulge in luxury and ease. But Akbar had had

to fight, and he remained to the end a man of action, and we see his

character reflected in his stronghold Fatehpur-Sikri, which one visits

from Agra and never forgets. If I were asked to say which place in India

most fascinated me and touched the imagination I think I should name

this dead city.

Akbar, the son of Babar, is my hero among the Moguls, and this was

Akbar's chosen home, until scarcity of water forced him to abandon it

for Agra. Akbar, the noblest of the great line of Moguls whose splendour

ended in 1707 with the death of Aurungzebe, came to the throne in 1556,

only eight years before Shakespeare was born, and died in 1605, and it

is interesting to realise how recent were his times, the whole

suggestion of Fatehpur-Sikri being one of very remote antiquity. Yet

when it was being built so modern a masterpiece as _Hamlet_ was

being written and played. Those interested in the Great Moguls ought

really to visit Fatehpur-Sikri before Delhi or Agra, because Akbar was

the grandfather of Shah Jahan. But there can be no such chronological

wanderings in India. Have we not already seen Humayun's Tomb, outside

Delhi?--and Humayun was Akbar's father.

They say the leopard and the jackal keep

The courts where Akbar gloried....

--this adaptation of FitzGerald's lines ran through my mind as we passed

from room to room and tower to tower of Fatehpur-Sikri. There is nothing

to compare with it, except perhaps Pompeii. And in that comparison one

realises how impossible it is at a hazard to date an Indian ruin, for,

as I have said, Fatehpur-Sikri is from the days of Elizabeth, while

Pompeii was destroyed in the first century, and yet Pompeii in many ways

seems less ancient.

The walls of Fatehpur-Sikri are seven miles round and the city rises to

the summits of two steep hills. It was on the higher one that Akbar set

his palace. Civilisation has run a railway through the lower levels; the

old high road still climbs the hill under the incredibly lofty walls of

the palace. The royal enclosure is divided into all the usual courtyards

and apartments, but they are on a grander scale. Also the architecture

is more mixed. Here is the swimming bath; here are the cool, dark rooms

for the ladies of the harem in the hottest days, with odd corners where

Akbar is said to have played hide-and-seek with them; here is the hall

where Akbar, who kept an open mind on religion, listened to, and

disputed with, dialecticians of varying creeds--himself seated in the

middle, and the doctrinaires in four pulpits around him; here is the

Mint; here is the house of the Turkish queen, with its elaborate

carvings and decorations; here is the girls' school, with a courtyard

laid out for human chess, the pieces being slave-girls; here is a noble

mosque; here is the vast court where the great father of his people

administered justice, or what approximated to it, and received homage.

Here are the spreading stables and riding school; here is even the tomb

of a favourite elephant.

And here is the marble tomb of the Saint, the Shaikh Salim, whose

holiness brought it about that the Emperor became at last the father of

a son--none other than Jahangir. The shrine is visited even to this day

by childless wives, who tie shreds of their clothing to the lattice-work

of a marble window as an earnest of their maternal worthiness. It is

visited also by the devout for various purposes, among others by those

whose horses are sick and who nail votive horseshoes to the great gate.

According to tradition the mother of Jahangir was a Christian named

Miriam, and her house and garden may be seen, the house having the

traces of a fresco which by those who greatly wish it can be believed to

represent the Annunciation. Tradition, however, is probably wrong, and

the princess was from Jaipur and a true Mussulwoman.

From every height--and particularly from the Panch Mahal's roof--one

sees immense prospects and realises what a landmark the stronghold of

Fatehpur-Sikri must have been to the dwellers in the plains; but no view

is the equal of that which bursts on the astonished eyes at the great

north gateway, where all Rajputana is at one's feet. I do not pretend to

any exhaustive knowledge of the gates of the world, but I cannot believe

that there can be others set as this Gate of Victory is in the walls of

a palace, at the head of myriad steps, on the very top of a commanding

rock and opening on to thousands of square miles of country. Having seen

the amazing landscape one descends the steps to the road, and looking up

is astonished and exalted by seeing the gate from below. Nothing so

grand has ever come into my ken. The Taj Mahal is unforgettingly

beautiful; but this glorious gate in the sky has more at once to

exercise and stimulate the imagination and reward the vision.

On the gate are the words: "Isa (Jesus), on whom be peace, said: 'The

world is a bridge; pass over it, but build no house on it. The world

endures but an hour; spend it in devotion.'"

Having seen Fatehpur-Sikri, where Akbar lived and did more than build a

house, it is a natural course to return to Agra by way of Sikandra,

where he was buried. Sikandra is like the Taj Mahal and Humayun's Tomb

in general disposition--the mausoleum itself being in the centre of a

garden. But it is informed by a more sombre spirit. The burial-place of

the mighty Emperor is in the very heart of the building, gained by a

sloping passage lit by an attendant with a torch. Here was Akbar laid,

while high above, on the topmost stage of the mausoleum, in the full

light, is his cenotoph of marble, with the ninety-nine names of Allah

inscribed upon it. Near the cenotaph is a marble pillar on which once

was set the Koh-i-noor diamond, chief of Akbar's treasures. To-day it is

part of the English regalia.

LUCKNOW

The Ridge at Delhi is a sufficiently moving reminder of the Indian

Mutiny; but it is at Lucknow that the most poignant phases are re-

enacted. At Delhi may be seen, preserved for ever, the famous buildings

which the British succeeded in keeping--Hindu Rao's house, and the

Observatory, and Flagstaff Tower, the holding of which gave them

victory; while in the walls of the Kashmir Gate our cannon balls are

still visibly imbedded. There is also the statue of John Nicholson in

the Kudsia Garden, and in the little Museum of the Fort are countless

souvenirs.

But Lucknow was the centre of the tragedy, and the Residency is

preserved as a sacred spot. Not even the recent Great War left in its

track any more poignant souvenirs of fortitude and disaster than the

little burial ground here, around the ruins of the church, where those

who fell in the Mutiny and those who fought or suffered in the Mutiny

are lying. Long ago as it was--1857--there are still a few vacant lots

destined to be filled. Chief of the tombstones that bear the honoured

names is that of the heroic defender who kept upon the topmost roof the

banner of England flying. It has the simple and touching inscription:

"Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty. May the Lord have

mercy on his soul!"

In the Residency every step of the siege and relief can be followed. I

was there first on a serene evening after rain; and but for some

tropical trees it might have been an English scene. All that was lacking

was a thrush or blackbird's note; but the grass was as soft and green as

at home and the air as sweet. I shall long retain the memory of the

contrast between the incidents which give this enclosure its unique

place in history and the perfect calm brooding over all. And whenever

any one calls my attention to a Bougainvillaea I shall say, "Ah! But you

should see the Bougainvillaea in the Residency garden at Lucknow."

Everywhere that I went in India I found this noble lavish shrub in full

flower, but never wearing such a purple as at Lucknow. The next best was

in the Fort at Delhi. It was not till I reached Calcutta that I caught

any glimpse of the famous scarlet goldmore tree in leaf; but I saw

enough to realise how splendid must be the effect of an avenue of them.

Bombay, however, was rich in hedges of poinsettia, and they serve as an

introduction to the goldmore's glory.

Before leaving the Residency I should like to quote a passage from the

little brochure on the defence of Lucknow which Sir Harcourt Butler, the

Governor of the United Provinces, with characteristic thoughtfulness has

prepared for the use of his guests. "The visitor to the Residency," he

wrote, thinking evidently of a similar evening to that on which we

visited it, "who muses on the past and the future, may note that upon

the spot where the enemy's assault was hottest twin hospitals for

Europeans and Indians have been erected by Oudh's premier Taluqdar, the

Maharaja of Balrampur; and as the sun sets over the great city,

lingering awhile on the trim lawns and battered walls which link the

present with the past, a strong hope may come to him, like a distant

call to prayer, that old wounds may soon be healed, and old causes of

disunion may disappear, and that Englishmen and Indians, knit together

by loyalty to their beloved Sovereign, may be as brothers before the

altar of the Empire, bearing the Empire's burden, and sharing its

inestimable privileges, and, it may be, adding something not yet seen or

dreamt of to its world-wide and weather-beaten fame."

I left Lucknow with regret, and would advise any European with time to

spare, and the desire to be at once civilised and warm, to think

seriously of spending a winter there instead of in the illusory sunshine

of the Riviera, or the comparative barbarity of Algiers. The journey is

longer, but the charm of the place would repay.

A TIGER

To have the opportunity of hunting a tiger--on an elephant too--which by

a stroke of luck fell to me, is to experience the un-English character

of India at its fullest. Almost everything else could be reproduced

elsewhere--the palaces, the bazaars, the caravans, the mosques and

temples with their worshippers--but not the jungle, the Himalayas, the

vast swamps through which our elephants waded up to the Plimsoll, the

almost too painful ecstasies of the pursuit of an eater of man.

The master of the chase, who has many tigers to his name, was Sir

Harcourt Butler, whose hospitality is famous, so large and warm is it,

and so minute, and it was because he was not satisfied that the ordinary

diversions of the "Lucknow Week" were sufficient for his guests, that he

impulsively arranged a day's swamp-deer shooting on the borders of

Nepaul. The time was short, or of elephants there would have been

seventy or more; as it was, we were apologised to (there were only about

six of us) for the poverty of the supply, a mere five and twenty being

obtainable. But to these eyes, which had never seen more than six

elephants at once, and those in the captivity either of a zoo or a

circus, a row of five and twenty was astounding. They were waiting for

us on the plain, at a spot distant some score of miles by car, through

improvised roads, from the station, whither an all-night railway journey

had borne us. The name of the station, if I ever knew it, I have

forgotten: there was no room in my heated brain for such trifles; but I

have forgotten nothing else.

It was after an hour and a half's drive in the cool and spicy early

morning air--between the fluttering rags on canes which told the drivers

how to steer--that we came suddenly in sight of some distant tents and

beside them an immense long dark inexplicable mass which through the

haze seemed now and then to move. As we drew nearer, this mass was

discerned to be a row of elephants assembled in line ready to salute the

Governor. The effect was more impressive and more Eastern than anything

I had seen. Grotesque too--for some had painted faces and gilded toes,

and not a few surveyed me with an expression in which the comic spirit

was too noticeable. Six or seven had howdahs, the rest blankets: those

with howdahs being for the party and its leader, Bam Bahadur, a noted

shikaree; and the others to carry provisions and bring back the spoil.

On the neck of each sat an impassive mahout.

To one to whom the pen is mightier than the gun and whose half a

century's bag contains only a few rabbits, a hedgehog and a moorhen, it

is no inconsiderable ordeal to be handed a repeating rifle and some

dozens of cartridges and be told that that is your elephant--the big one

there, with the red ochre on its forehead. To be on an elephant in the

jungle without the responsibilities of a lethal weapon would be

sufficient thrill for one day: but to be expected also to deal out death

was too much. In the company of others, however, one can do anything;

and I gradually ascended to the top, not, as the accomplished hunters

did, by placing a foot on the trunk and being swung heavenwards, but

painfully, on a ladder; by my side being a very keen Indian youth, the

son of a minor chieftain, who spoke English perfectly and was to

instruct me in Nimrod's lore.

And so the procession started, and for a while discomfort set acutely

in, for the movement of a howdah is short and jerky, and it takes some

time both to adjust oneself to it and to lose the feeling that the

elephant sooner or later--and probably sooner--must trip and fall. But

the glory of the morning, the urgency of our progress, the novelty and

sublimity of the means of transport, the strangeness of the scene, and

my companion's speculations on the day's promise, overcame any personal

want of ease and I forgot myself in the universal. Our destination was a

series of marshes some six miles away, where the gonds--or swamp-deer--

were usually found, and we were divided up, some elephants, of which

mine was one, taking the left wing, with instructions on reaching a

certain spot to wait there for the deer who would move off in that

direction; others taking the right wing; and others beating up the

middle.

We began with a trial of nervous stamina--for a river far down in its

bed below us almost immediately occurred, and this had to be crossed. I

abandoned all hope as the elephant descended the bank almost, as it

seemed, perpendicularly, and plunged into the water with an enormous

splash. But after he had squeeged through, extricating himself with a

gigantic wrench, the ground was level for a long while, and there was

time to look around and recollect one's fatalism. Far ahead in a blue

mist were the Himalayas. All about were unending fields, with here and

there white cattle grazing. Cranes stretched their necks above the

grass; now and then a herd of blackbuck (which were below our hunting

ambitions) scampered away; the sky was full of wild-duck and other

water-fowl.

Of the hunting of the gond I should have something to say had not a

diversion occurred which relegated that lively and elusive creature to

an obscure place in the background. We had finished the beat, and most

of us had emerged from the swamp to higher ground where an open space,

or maidan, corresponding to a drive in an English preserve, but on the

grand scale, divided it from the jungle--all our thoughts being set upon

lunch--when suddenly across this open space passed a blur of yellow and

black only a few yards from the nearest elephant. It was so unexpected

and so quick that even the trained eyes of my companion were uncertain.

"Did you see?" he asked me in a voice of hushed and wondering awe.

"Could that have been a tiger?" I could not say, but I understood his

excitement. For the tiger is the king of Indian carnivorae, the most

desired of all game. Hunters date their lives by them: such and such a

thing happened not on the anniversary of their wedding day; not when

their boy went to Balliol; not when they received the K.C.I.E.; but in

the year that they shot this or that man-eater.

That a tiger had really chanced upon us we soon ascertained. Also that

it had been hit by the rifle on the first elephant and had disappeared

into the jungle, which consisted hereabouts of a grass some twenty feet

high, bleached by the sun.

A Council of War followed, and we were led by Bam Bahadur on a rounding-

up manoeuvre. According to his judgment the tiger would remain just

inside the cover, and our duty was therefore to make a wide detour and

then advance in as solid a semicircle as possible upon him and force him

again into the open, where the hunter who had inflicted the first wound

was to remain stationed. Accordingly all the rest of us entered the

jungle in single file, our elephants treading down the grass with their

great irresistible feet or wrenching it away with their invincible

trunks. It was now that the shikaree was feeling the elephant shortage.

Had there been seventy-five instead of only twenty-five, he said, all

would be well: he could then form a cordon such as no tiger might break

through. For lack of these others, when the time came to turn and

advance upon our prey he caused fires to be lighted here and there where

the gaps were widest, so that we forged onwards not only to the

accompaniment of the shrill cries of the mahouts and the noise of

plunging and overwhelming elephants, but to the fierce roar and crackle

of burning stalks.

And thus, after an hour in this bewildering tangle, with the universe

filled with sound and strangeness, and the scent of wood smoke mingling

with the heat of the air, and the lust of the chase in our veins, we

drew to the spot where the animal was guessed to be hiding, and knew

that the guess was true by the demeanour of the elephants. Real danger

had suddenly entered into the adventure; and they showed it. A wounded

tiger at bay can do desperate things, and some of the elephants now

refused to budge forward any more, or complied only with terrified

screams. Some of the unarmed mahouts were also reluctant, and shouted

their fears. But the shikaree was inexorable. There the tiger was, and

we must drive it out.

Closer and closer we drew, until every elephant's flank was pressing

against its neighbour, the outside ones being each at the edge of the

open space; in the middle of which was the twenty-fifth with its

vigilant rider standing tense with his rifle to his shoulder. The noise

was now deafening. Every one was uttering something, either to scare the

tiger or to encourage the elephants or his neighbour or possibly

himself; while now and then from the depths of the grass ahead of us

came an outraged growl, with more than a suggestion of contempt in it

for such unsportsmanship as could array twenty-five elephants, half a

hundred men and a dozen rifles against one inoffensive wild beast.

And then suddenly the grass waved, there was a rustle and rush and a

snarl of furious rage, and once again a blur of yellow and black crossed

the open space. Six or more reports rang out, and to my dying day I

shall remember, with mixed feelings, that one of these reports was the

result of pressure on a trigger applied by a finger belonging to me.

That the tiger was hit again--by other bullets than mine--was certain,

but instead of falling it disappeared into the jungle on the other side

of the maidan, and again we were destined to employ enclosing tactics.

It was now intensely hot, but nobody minded; and we were an hour and a

half late for lunch, but nobody minded: the chase was all! The phrase

"out for blood" had taken on its literal primitive meaning.

The second rounding-up was less simple than the first, because the tiger

had more choice of hiding places; but again our shikaree displayed his

wonderful intuition, and in about an hour we had ringed the creature in.

That this was to be the end was evident from the electrical

purposefulness which animated the old hands. The experienced shots were

carefully disposed, and my own peace of mind was not increased by the

warning "If the tiger leaps on your elephant, don't shoot"--the point

being that novices can be very wild with their rifles under such

conditions. As the question "What shall I do instead?" was lost in the

tumult, the latter stages of this momentous drama were seen by these

eyes less steadily and less whole than I could have wished. But I saw

the tiger spring, growling, at an elephant removed some four yards from

mine, and I saw it driven back by a shot from one of the native hunters.

And then when, after another period of anxious expectancy, it emerged

again from the undergrowth, and sprang towards our host, I saw him put

two bullets into it almost instantaneously; and the beautiful obstinate

creature fell, never to rise again.

THE SACRED CITY

The devout Hindu knows in Benares the height of ecstasy: but, if I am

typical, the European experiences there both discomfort and inquietude.

Nowhere else in India did I feel so foreign, so alien. To be of cool

Christian traditions and an Occidental, an inquisitive sightseer among

these fervent pilgrims intent upon their pious duties and rapt in

exaltation and unthinking inflexible belief, was in itself

disconcerting, almost to the point of shame; while the pilgrims were so

remarkably of a different world, a different era, that one felt lost.

This, however, is not all. India is never too sanitary, except where the

English are in their own strongholds, but Benares--at any rate the parts

which the tourist must visit--is least scrupulous in such matters. The

canonization of the cow must needs carry a penalty with it, and Benares

might be described as a sanctified byre without any labouring Hercules

in prospect. Godliness it may have, but cleanliness is very distant. The

streets, too, seem to be narrower and more congested than those in any

other city; so that it is often embarrassingly difficult to treat the

approaching ruminants with the respect due to them. Fortunately they are

seldom anything but mild and unaggressive. Part perplexed, part

inquisitive, and part contemptuous, they are met everywhere, while in

one of the temples in which the unbeliever may (to his great

contentment) do no more than stand at the entrance, they are frankly

worshipped. In another temple monkeys are revered too, careering about

the walls and courtyards and being fed by the curious and the devout.

Holiness is not only the peculiar characteristic of Benares: it is also

its staple industry. In the streets there is a shrine at every few feet,

while the shops where little lingams are for sale must be numbered by

hundreds.

The chief glory of Benares is, however, the Ganges, on one side of which

is the teeming sweltering city with its palaces and temples heaped high

for two or three miles, and bathers swarming at the river's edge; while

the other bank is flat and bare. A watering-place front on the ocean's

shore does not end more suddenly and completely. There is nothing that I

have seen with which to compare the north bank of the Ganges, with the

morning sun on its many-coloured facades and towers, but Venice. As one

is rowed slowly down the river it is of Venice that one instinctively

thinks. As in Venice, the palaces are of various colours, pink and red

and yellow and blue, and the sun has crumbled their facades in the same

way. But there is this difference--that over the Benares roofs the

monkeys scamper.

Gradually Venice is forgotten as the novel interest of the scene

captures one's whole attention. At each of the ghauts (a landing place

or steps) variegated masses of pilgrims--no matter how early the hour,

and to see them rightly one ought to start quite by six--are making

their ablutions and deriving holiness from the yellow tide. You saw them

yesterday trudging wearily through the streets, the sacred city at last

reached; and here they are in their thousands, brown and glistening.

They are of every age: quite old white-bearded men and withered women,

meticulously serious in their ritual, and then boys and girls deriving

also a little fun from their immersion. Here and there the bathing ghaut

is diversified by a burning ghaut, and one may catch a glimpse of the

extremities of the corpse twisting among the faggots. Here and there is

a boat or raft in which a priest is seated under his umbrella, fishing

for souls as men in punts on the Thames fish for roach. And over all is

the pitiless sun, hot even now, before breakfast, but soon to be

unbearable.

I was not sorry when the voyage ended and we returned to the Maharajah's

Guest House for a little repose and refreshment, before visiting the

early Buddhist stronghold at Sarnath, the "Deer Park," where the Master

first preached his doctrine and whither his five attendants sought a

haven after they had forsaken him. Drifting about its ruins and

contemplating the glorious capital of the famous Asoka column--all that

has been preserved--I found myself murmuring the couplet,--

With a friendly Buddhist priest I seek respite from

the strife

And manifold anomalies which go to make up life--

but the odds are that even the early Buddhists were not immune.

CALCUTTA

Calcutta and Bombay are strangely different--so different that they can

only be contrasted. Bombay, first and foremost, has the sea, and I can

think of nothing more lovely than the sunsets that one watches from the

lawn of the Yacht Club or from the promenade on Warder Road. Calcutta

has no sea--nothing but a very difficult tidal river. Calcutta, again,

has no Malabar Hill. But then Bombay has no open space to compare with

the Maidan; and for all its crowded bazaars it has no street so

diversified and interesting as Harrison Road. It has no Chinatown. Its

climate is enervating where that of Calcutta, if not bracing--and no one

could call it that--at any rate does not extract every particle of

vigour from the European system.

But the special glory of Calcutta is the Maidan, that vast green space

which, unlike so many parks, spreads itself at the city's feet. One does

not have to seek it: there it is, with room for every one and a race-

course and a cricket-ground to boot. And if there is no magic in the

evening prospect such as the sea and its ships under the flaming or

mysterious enveiling sky can offer to the eye at Bombay, there is a

quality of golden richness in the twilight over Calcutta, as seen across

the Maidan, through its trees, that is unique. I rejoiced in it daily.

This twilight is very brief, but it is exquisite.

It is easier in Calcutta to be suddenly transported to England than in

any other Indian city that I visited. There are, it is true, more

statues of Lord Curzon than we are accustomed to; but many of the homes

are quite English, save for the multitude of servants; Government House,

serene and spacious and patrician, is a replica of Kedlestone Hall in

Derbyshire: the business buildings within and without are structurally

English, and the familiar Scotch accent sounds everywhere; but the

illusion is most complete in St. John's Church, that very charming,

cool, white and comfortable sanctuary, in the manner of Wren, and in St.

Andrew's too. Secluded here, the world shut off, one might as well be in

some urban conventicle at home on a sunny August day, as in the

glamorous East. St. John's particularly I shall remember: its light, its

distinction, its surrounding verdancy.

ROSE AYLMER

Ah, what avails the sceptred race,

Ah, what the form divine!

What every virtue, every grace!

Rose Aylmer, all were thine!

Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes

May weep, but never see,

A night of memories and sighs

I consecrate to thee.

One curious task which I set myself in Calcutta was to find Rose

Aylmer's grave, for it was there that, in 1800, the mortal part of the

lady whom Landor immortalised was buried. But I tried in vain. I walked

for hours amid the sombre pyramidal tombs beneath which the Calcutta

English used to be laid, among them, in 1815, Thackeray's father, but I

found no trace of her whom I sought. I have seen many famous cemeteries,

all depressing, from Kensal Green to Genoa, from Rock Creek to

Montmartre, but none can approach in its forlorn melancholy the tract of

stained and crumbling sarcophagi packed so close as almost to touch each

other, in the burial ground off Rawdon Street and Park Street. Let no

one establish a monument of cement over me. Any material rather than

that!

JOB AND JOE

If I did not find Rose Aylmer's tomb, I found, in St. John's pleasant

God's Acre, the comely mausoleum of Job Charnock, and this delighted me,

because for how long has been ringing in my ears that line--

"The tall pale widow is mine, Joe, the little brown

girl's for you."

which I met with so many years ago in "The Light That Failed," where the

Nilghai sings it to his own music! He got it, he said, from a tombstone,

in a distant land; and the tombstone is now incorporated with Job

Charnock's, the distant land being India; but the verses I have had to

collect elsewhere. I found them in Calcutta, in my host's library.

Joe was Joseph, or Josiah, Townsend, a pilot of the Ganges, and

tradition has it that he and Job Charnock, who, as an officer of the

East India Company, founded Calcutta in 1690, saved a pretty young Hindu

widow from ascending her husband's funeral pyre and committing suttee.

Tradition states further that Job Charnock and his bride "lived lovingly

for many years and had several children," until in due time she was

buried in the mausoleum at St. John's, where her husband sacrificed a

cock on each anniversary of her death ever after. The story has been

examined and found to be improbable, but Charnock was a bold fellow who

might easily have started many legends; and the poem remains, and if

there is a livelier, I should like to know of it. I have been at the

agreeable pains of reconstructing the verses as they were probably

written, so that there are two more than the Nilghai sang. The whole is

a very curious haunting ballad, leaving us with the desire to know much

more of the lives of both men--Job Charnock the frontiersman, and Joseph

Townsend, "skilful and industrious, a kind father and a useful friend,"

who could navigate not only the Ganges but the shifting Hooghli. Rarely

can so much mixed autobiography and romance have been packed into six

stanzas--and here too the adventurous East and West meet:--

I've shipped my cable, messmates, I'm dropping down

with the tide;

I have my sailing orders while ye at anchor ride,

And never, on fair June morning, have I put out to sea

With clearer conscience, or better hope, or heart more light and free.

An Ashburnham! A Fairfax! Hark how the corslets ring!

Why are the blacksmiths out to-day, beating those men at the spring?

Ho, Willie, Hob and Cuddie!--bring out your boats amain,

There's a great red pool to swim them o'er, yonder in Deadman's Lane.

Nay, do not cry, sweet Katie--only a month afloat

And then the ring and the parson, at Fairlight Church, my doat.

The flower-strewn path--the Press Gang! No, I shall never see

Her little grave where the daisies wave in the breeze on Fairlight Lee.

"Shoulder to shoulder, Joe, my boy, into the crowd like a wedge!

Out with the hangers, messmates, but do not strike with the edge!"

Cries Charnock, "Scatter the faggots! Double that Brahmin in two!

The tall pale widow is mine, Joe, the little brown girl for you."

Young Joe (you're nearing sixty), why is your hide so dark?

Katie had fair soft blue eyes--who blackened yours? Why, hark!

The morning gun! Ho, steady! The arquebuses to me;

I've sounded the Dutch High Admiral's heart as my lead doth sound the

sea.

Sounding, sounding the Ganges--floating down with the tide,

Moor me close by Charnock, next to my nut-brown bride.

My blessing to Katie at Fairlight--Howell, my thanks to you--

Steady!--We steer for Heaven through scud drifts cold and blue.

EXIT

I arrived in Bombay on the last day of 1919 and embarked at Calcutta for

Japan on the evening of February 17th, seven weeks later. But to embark

at Calcutta is not to leave it, for we merely dropped down the river a

short distance that night, and for the next day and a half we were in

the Hooghli, sounding all the way. It is a difficult river to emerge

from; nor do I recommend any one else to travel, as I did, on a boat

with a forward deck cargo of two or three hundred goats on the starboard

side and half as many monkeys on the port, with a small elephant

tethered between and a cage of leopards adjacent. These, the property of

an American dealer in wild animals, were intended for sale in the

States; all but one of the leopards, which, being lame, he had decided

to kill, to provide a "robe" for his wife. Nothing could be more

different than the careless aimless activities of the monkeys I had seen

among the trees between Agra and Delhi and scampering over the parapets

of Benares, all thieves and libertines with a charter, and the

restriction of these poor cowering mannikins, overcrowded in their

cages, with an abysmal sorrow in their eyes. Many died on the voyage,

and I think the Indian Government should look into the question of their

export very narrowly.

JAPAN

INTRODUCTORY

I ought not to write about Japan at all, for I was there but three short

weeks, and rain or snow fell almost all the time, and I sailed for

America on the very day that the cherry blossom festivities began. But--

well, there is only one Fujiyama, and it is surpassingly beautiful and

satisfying--the perfect mountain--and I should feel contemptible if I

did not add my eulogy of it--my gratitude--to all the others.

Since, then, I am to say something of Fuji, let the way be paved.

THE LITTLE LAND

One is immediately struck, on landing at Kobe--and continually after--by

the littleness of Japan. The little flimsy houses, the little flimsy

shops, the small men, the toylike women, the tiny children, as numerous

and like unto each other as the pebbles on the shore--these are

everywhere. But although small of stature the Japanese men are often

very powerfully built and many of them suggest great strength. They are

taking to games, too. While I was in the country baseball was a craze,

and boys were practising pitching and catching everywhere, even in the

streets of the cities.

Littleness--with which is associated the most delicate detail and

elaborate finish--is the mark also of modern Japanese art. In the

curiosity shops whatever was massive or largely simple was Chinese. Even

the royal palaces at Kyoto are small, the rooms, exquisite as they are,

with perfect joinery and ancient paintings, being seldom more than a few

feet square, with very low ceilings. I went over two of these palaces,

falling into the hands, at each, of English-speaking officials whose

ciceronage was touched with a kind of rapture. At the Nijo, especially,

was my guide an enthusiast, becoming lyrical over the famous cartoons of

the "Wet Heron" and the "Sleeping Sparrows."

In India I had grown accustomed to removing my shoes at the threshold of

mosques. There it was out of deference to Allah, but in Japan the

concession is demanded solely in the interests of floor polish, and you

take your shoes off not only in palaces and houses but in some of the

shops. It gave one an odd burglarious feeling to be creeping noiselessly

from room to room of the Nijo; but there was nothing to steal. The place

was empty, save for decoration.

There is a certain amplitude in some of the larger Kyoto temples, with

their long galleries and massive gateways, but these only serve to

accentuate the littleness elsewhere. In the principal Kyoto temple I had

for guide a minute Japanese with the ecstatic passion for trifles that

seems to mark his race. A picture representing the miracle of the "Fly-

away Sparrows," as he called them, was the treasure on which he

concentrated, and next to that he drew my attention to the boards of the

gangway uniting two buildings, which, as one stepped on them, emitted a

sound that the Japanese believe to resemble the song of Philomela. To me

it brought no such memory, and the fact that this effect, common in

Japan, is technically known as "a nightingale squeak," perhaps supports

my insensitiveness.

If old Japan is to be found anywhere it is in Kyoto--in spite of its

huge factory chimneys. In Tokio, complete European dress is common in

the streets, but in Kyoto it is the exception. Tokio also wears boots,

but Kyoto is noisy with pattens night and day. Not only are there

countless shops in Kyoto given up to porcelain, carvings, screens,

bronzes, old armour, and so forth, but no matter how trumpery the normal

stock in trade of the other shops, a number of them have a little glass

case--a shop within a shop, as it were--in which a few rare and ancient

articles of beauty are kept. A great deal of Japan is expressed in this

pretty custom.

THE RICE FIELDS

My first experience of Japanese scenery of any wildness was gained while

shooting the rapids of the Katsuragava, an exciting voyage among

boulders in a shallow and often very turbulent stream in a steep and

craggy valley a few miles from Kyoto. Previous to this expedition I had

seen, from the train, only the trim rice fields,--each a tiny

parallelogram with its irrigation channels as a boundary, so carefully

tended that there is not a weed in the whole country. Japan is cut up

into these absurd little squares, of which twenty and more would go into

an ordinary English field. Often the terminal posts are painted a bright

red; often a little row of family tombs is there too. The watermill is a

common object of the country. But birds are few and animals one sees

never. Indeed in all my three weeks I saw no four-footed animals,

except a dead rat, two pigs and one cat. I am excluding of course beasts

of draught--horses and bullocks--which are everywhere. Not a cow, not a

sheep, not a dog! but that there are cattle is proved by the proverbial

excellence of Kobe steaks, which I tested and can swear to. In all my

three weeks, both in cities and the country, I saw only one crying

child. Of children there were millions, mostly boys, but only one was

unhappy.

SURFACE MATERIALISM

In spite of Kyoto's eight hundred temples I could not get any but a

materialistic concept of its inhabitants; and elsewhere this impression

was emphasised. A stranger cannot, of course, know; he can but record

his feelings, without claiming any authority for them. But I am sure I

was never in a country where I perceived fewer indications of any

spiritual life. Every one is busy; every one seems to be happy or at any

rate not discontented; every one chatters and laughs and is, one feels,

a fatalist. Sufficient unto the day! After all, it is the women of a

nation that chiefly keep burning the sacred flame and pass it on; but in

Japan, I understand, the women are far too busy in pleasing the men to

have time for such duties; Japan is run by men for men. It is an

unwritten law that a woman must never be anything but gay in her lord's

presence, must never for a moment claim the privilege of peevishness.

As an instance of the Japanese woman's indifference to fate and

readiness to oblige, I may say that we had on our ship two or three

hundred girls in charge of a duenna or so, who were bound for Honolulu

to be married to Japanese settlers there, to whom their photographs had

been forwarded. These girls are known as "Picture Brides." At Honolulu

their new proprietors awaited them, and I suppose identified and

appropriated them, although to the European eye one face differed no

whit from another.

The Japanese have the practical qualities that consort with materialism.

They are quick to supply creature comforts; their hotels are well-

managed; their cooks are excellent; their sign-posts are numerous and, I

believe, very circumstantial; at the railway stations are lists of the

show places in the neighbourhood; the telephone is general. But there

are strange failings. The roads, for example, are often very bad,

although so many motor-cars exist. Even in Tokio the puddles and mud are

abominable. There is no fixed rule to force rickshaw men to carry bells.

There is no rule of the road at all, so that the driver of a vehicle

must be doubly alert, having to make up his mind not only as to what he

is going to do himself, but also what the approaching driver is probably

going to do. From time to time, I believe, a rule of the road has been

tried, but it has always broken down.

The rickshaw bells are the more important, because the Japanese are not

observant. They may see Fuji and stand for hours worshipping a spray of

cherry blossom, but they do not see what is coming. Normally they look

down.

The rickshaw is comfortable and speedy; but to be drawn about by a

fellow-creature is a humiliating experience and I never ceased to feel

too conspicuous and ashamed. I discovered also how easy it is to lose

one's temper with these men. I used to sit and wonder if there had ever

been a runaway, and I never hired a rickshaw without thinking of Mr.

Anstey's story of the talking horse.

FIRST GLIMPSE OF FUJI

I left Kyoto for Yokohama on Wednesday night, March 17, 1920, at eleven,

and Thursday, March 18, 1920, thus remains with me as a red-letter day,

for it was then, at about half-past seven in the morning, that, lifting

the blind of my sleeping compartment, I saw--almost within reach, as it

seemed, dazzlingly white under its snow against a clear blue sky, with

the sun flooding it with glory--Fujiyama. I was to see it again several

times--for I went to Myanoshita for that purpose--but never again so

startlingly and wonderfully as this.

When I am asked to name in a word the most beautiful thing I saw on my

travels I mention Fujiyama instantly. There is nothing else to challenge

it. Perhaps had I seen Everest from Darjeeling I might have a different

story to tell; but I missed it. The Taj? Yes, the Taj is a divine work

of man; but it has not the serene lofty isolation of this sublime

mountain, rising from the plain alone and immense with almost perfect

symmetry.

I was not to see Fujiyama again for a week or so, but in the meanwhile I

saw the Daibutsu, the giant figure of Buddha, at Kamakura, in all its

bland placidity. These were the only big things I found in Japan.

TWO FUNERALS

Yokohama is industrial and dirty everywhere but on the drive beside the

harbour, and on the Bluff, where the rich foreigners live. I visited one

house on this pleasant eminence and there was nothing in it to suggest

that it was in Japan any more than in, say, Cheltenham. The form was

English, the furniture was English, the pictures and books were English;

photographs of school and college cricket elevens gave it the final home

touch. Only in the garden were there exotic indications. The English

certainly have the knack of carrying their atmosphere with them. I had

noticed that often in India; but this Yokohama villa was the completest

exemplification.

Wandering about the city I came one morning on a funeral procession that

ought to have pleased Henry Ward Beecher, who, on the only occasion on

which I heard him, when he was very old and I was very young, urged upon

his hearers the importance of bright colours and flowers instead of the

ordinary habiliments and accoutrements of woe. For when a soul is on its

way to paradise, he said, we should be glad. The Yokohama cortege was

headed by men bearing banners; then came girls all in white, riding in

rickshaws; then the gaudy hearse; then priests in rickshaws; and finally

the relations and friends. The effect conveyed was not one of

melancholy; but even if every one had been in black, impressiveness

would have been wanting, for no one can look dignified in a rickshaw.

Compared, however, with a funeral which I saw in Hong-Kong, the Yokohama

ceremony was solemnity in essence. The Hong-Kong obsequies were those of

a tobacco-magnate's wife and the widower had determined to spare no

expense on their thoroughness. He had even offered, but without success,

to compensate the tramway company for a suspension of the service, the

result of his failure being that every few minutes the procession was

held up to permit the cars to go by; which meant that instead of taking

only two hours to pass any given point, it took three. The estimated

cost of the funeral was one hundred thousand dollars and all Hong-Kong

was there to see.

To Chinese eyes it doubtless had a sombre religious character, but to us

it was merely a diverting spectacle of incredible prolongation. We were

not wholly to blame in missing its sanctity, for the participants, who

were more like mummers than mourners, had all been hired and were

enjoying the day off. For the most part they merely wore their fancy

dress and walked and talked or played instruments, but now and then

there was a dragon and a champion boxing it and these certainly earned

their money. At intervals came bearers with trays on which were comforts

for the next world or symbolical devices, while, to infinity both in

front and behind, banners and streamers and lanterns danced and jogged

above all. A miracle-show of the middle ages can have been not unlike

it.

THE LITTLE GEISHA

I left Japan, as I have said, just before the cherry-blossom festivities

began, but I was able to see a number of the dances--which never change

but are passed with exactitude, step for step, gesture for gesture and

expression for expression, from one geisha to another--as performed by a

child who was being educated for the profession. Although so young she

knew accurately upwards of sixty dances, and the pick of these she

executed for a few spectators, in a little fragile paper-walled house

outside Yokohama, while her adoring aunt played the wistful repetitive

accompaniments.

The little creature--a mere watch-chain ornament--had a typical Japanese

face, half mask, half mischief, and a tiny high voice which now and then

broke into the dance. But dances, strictly speaking, they are not. They

are really posturing and the manoeuvres of a fan. To me they are

strangely fascinating, and, with the music, almost more so than our

Western ballets. But there is a difference between the ballet and the

geisha dances, and it is so wide that there is no true comparison; for

whereas the ballet stimulates and excites, these Japanese movements

hypnotise and lull.

MANNERS

The public manners of the Japanese are not good. In all my solitary

walks about Myanoshita I met with no single peasant who passed the time

of day, and in the streets of Tokio English people were being jostled

and stared at and treated without respect. It was a moment when

Americans were unpopular, and the theory was broached that for fear of

missing the chance to be rude to an American the Japanese became rude to

all outlanders indiscriminately. One indeed gathered the impression

that, except in Kyoto, which is a backwater, foreigners are no longer

wanted. "Japan for the Japanese" would seem to be the motto: one day,

not far distant, to be amended to "The World for Japan." I shall never

forget the humiliation I suffered in a stockbroker's office in Tokio,

into which, seeing the words "English spoken" over the door, I had

ventured in the hope of being directed to an address I was seeking. Not

a word of English did any one know, but the whole staff left its

typewriters and desks to come and laugh. I was always willing to remove

the gravity of Japanese children by my grotesque Occidentalism, but I

have a very real objection to being a butt for the ridicule of grown-

ups. Such an incident could not have occurred, I believe, anywhere else.

But it is not only the foreigners to whom the Japanese are rude: they do

nothing for their fellows either. The want of chivalry in trains and

trams was conspicuous.

The ceremonial manners of the Japanese can, however, be more precise and

formal than any I ever witnessed. A wedding reception chanced to be in

progress in my Tokio hotel one afternoon, and through the open door I

had glimpses of Japanese gentlemen in frock coats bowing to Japanese

ladies and making perfect right angles as they did so. So elaborate

indeed were the courtesies that to Western eyes they bordered

dangerously on burlesque.

The destination that I was seeking when I entered the stockbroker's

office was a certain book-store, and when I eventually found it I was

asked a question by a Japanese youth that still perplexes me. It was in

the English section, the principal volumes in which, as imported to

supply Japanese demands, were American, and all bore either upon success

in engineering and other professions and crafts, or on the rapid

acquirement of wealth. "How to double your income in a week"; "How to

get rich quickly"; "How to succeed in business"; and so forth; all

preaching, in fact, the new gospel which is doing Japan no good. There

were also, however, a certain number of novels, and one of the

customers, a boy who looked as though he were still at school, noting my

English appearance, brought a translation of Maupassant to me and asked

me what "soul" meant--"A Woman's Soul" being the new title. Now I defy

any one with no Japanese to make it clear to a Japanese boy with very

little English what a woman's soul is.

THE PLAY

At Tokio I was present for an hour or so at a performance in a national

theatre. It had been in progress for a long time when I entered and

would continue long after I left, for that is the Japanese custom. In

London people with too little to do are on occasion prepared to spend

the whole day outside theatres waiting for the doors to open. They will

then witness a two and a half hours' performance. But in Japan the plays

go on from eleven a.m. to eleven p.m. and the audience bring their

sustenance and tobacco with them. The seats are mats on the ground, and

the actors reach the stage by a passage through the auditorium as well

as from the wings. The scenery is very elementary, and there is always a

gate which has to be opened when the characters pass through and closed

after them, although it is isolated and has no contiguous wall or fence.

None of our Western morbid desire for novelty, I am told, troubles the

Japanese play-goer, who is prepared to witness the same drama, usually

based on an historical event or national legend thoroughly familiar to

him, for ever and ever. It is as though the theatres in England were

given up exclusively to, say, Shakespeare's Henry IV, V and VI sequence.

On the occasion of my visit there was little of what we call acting, but

endless elocution. During the performance the attendants walk about,

with the persistence of constables during a London police-court hearing,

carrying refreshments and little charcoal stoves. The signal for the

next act is a deafening clicking noise made by one of the stage hands on

two sticks, which gradually rises to a shattering crescendo as the

curtain is drawn aside. It must be understood that the theatre that I am

describing was set apart for national drama. In others there are topical

farces and laughter is continuous; but I did not visit any. On board

ship, however, we had a series of performances of such pieces by the

Japanese cabin attendants and waiters, many of whom were professional

actors. The Japanese passengers enjoyed them immensely.

MYANOSHITA

A whole week of my too short stay was given to Myanoshita, whither I was

driven by the impossibility of retaining a room in either Yokohama or

Tokio, and where I stayed willingly on, out of delight in the place

itself. After being cooped up for so long on ships, and kept inactive

under the heat of India, it was like a new existence to take immense

walks among these mountains in the keen rarified air, even though there

was both rain and snow. Myanoshita stands some four thousand feet high

and is situated in a valley in which are many summer cottages and health

resorts. The heart of this Alpine settlement is the Fujiya Hotel, where

I was living, which is kept by an enterprising Americanised and

Europeanised Japanese proprietor and his very charming wife, Madame

Yamaguchi, whose father was the founder of the house, and, I believe,

the discoverer of the district, and who herself is famous as a gracious

hostess throughout Japan. No hotel so well or so thoughtfully

administered have I ever stayed in; nor was I ever in another where the

water for the bath gushes in from a natural hot spring. But hot springs

are numerous in this region, while there is a gorge which I visited,

some four miles distant, where boiling sulphur hisses and bubbles for

ever and aye.

Many of the Myanoshita dishes were new to me and welcome. There is an

excellent salad called "Slow," and the bamboo, which is Japan's best

friend--serving the nation in scores of ways: as fences, as walls, as

water-pipes, as supports, as carrying-poles, as thatch, as fishing-

rods--here found its way into the salad bowl and was not distasteful.

The custom of drinking a glass of orange juice before breakfast might

well be adopted with us; but not the least of the oddities of England

which I realised as I moved about the earth is our unwillingness to eat

fruit. Japan also has a perfect mineral water, "Tansan."

When not making long expeditions to catch new glimpses of Fuji I roamed

about the hill-sides among the little villages, or leaned over crazy

bridges to watch the waterfalls beneath; for there is water everywhere,

tumbling down to the distant ocean, a wedge of which can be seen from

the hotel windows. This Japanese valley might be in Switzerland, save

for the absence of any but human life. Not a cow, not a goat.

The labourers wear blue linen smocks, usually with some device upon

them, and they merge into the landscape as naturally as French or

Belgian peasants. These men, whether working on the soil or the roads,

or engaged in cutting bamboos or building houses, wear the large straw

hats that one sees in the old Japanese prints. Nothing has changed in

their dress. But the modernized Japanese, the dweller in the cities or

casual visitor to the country, pins his faith to the bowler. The bowler

is so much his favourite headgear that he wears it often with native

costume on his body. Perhaps it is to Japan that all the bowlers have

gone, now that London has taken to the soft Homburg. It was odd to meet

groups of these bizarre little men among the precipices: even stranger

perhaps were their little ladies, especially on Sunday, in the gayest

Japanese clothes, their faces plastered with rice powder and cigarettes

in their mouths. Too many of them are disfigured by gold teeth, which

are so common in Japan as to be almost the rule. An English resident

assured me that I must not assume that the Japanese teeth are therefore

unusually defective: often the gold is merely ostentation, a visible

sign that the owner of the auriferous mouth is both alive to American

progress and can afford it.

Even in Myanoshita Fujiyama has to be sought for and climbed for, the

walls of rock that form the valley being so high and enclosing. But the

result is worth every effort. Immediately above the hotel is a hill from

whose summit the upper part of the enchanted mountain can be seen, and I

ascended tortuously to this point within an hour of my arrival. The next

day I walked to Lake Hakone (where the Emperor has a summer palace),

some eight miles away, in the hope of getting Fuji's white crest

reflected on its surface; but a veil of mist enshrouded all. And then

twice I went to the edge of the watershed at the head of the valley:

once struggling through the snow to the Otome Pass, on an immemorial and

nearly perpendicular bridle path, and once by the modern road to the

tunnel which, with characteristic address, the Japanese have bored

through the rock, thus reducing a very steep gradient.

In the tunnel the icicles were hanging several feet long and as big as

masts, and the air was biting. But one emerged suddenly upon a prospect

the wonder of which probably cannot be excelled--a vast plain far below,

made up of verdure and villages and lakes, with distant surrounding

heights, and immediately in front, filling half the sky, Fuji himself.

It is from this point, and from the ancient Otome Pass, a mile or so

away on the same ridge, that the symmetry of the mountain is most

perfect; and here one can best appreciate the simplicity of it, the

quiet natural ease with which it rises above its neighbours. There was

more snow on the slopes than when I had seen it from the train a few

days before; and the sky again was without a cloud. I have never been so

conscious of majestic serenity, without any concomitant feeling of awe.

Fuji is both sublime and human.

No other country has a symbol like this. When the Japanese think of

Japan they visualise Fuji: returning exiles crowd the decks for the

first glimpse of it; departing exiles with tears in their eyes watch it

disappear. There is not a shop window but has Fuji in some

representation; it is found in every house; its contours are engraved on

teaspoons, embossed on ash-trays. You cannot escape from its

counterfeits; but if you have seen it you do not mind.

When on my way home I found myself in an American picture gallery,

either in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston or New York, I lingered longest

in the rooms where the coloured prints of the Japanese masters hang--and

America has very fine collections, particularly in Boston--and I stood

longest before those landscapes by Hokusai and Hiroshige in which Fuji

occurs. Hokusai in particular venerated the mountain, and in many of his

most beautiful pictures people are calling to each other to admire some

new and marvellous aspect of it. It was he who drew Fuji as seen through

the arch of a breaking wave! I was looking at the British Museum's

example of this daring print only a few days ago, and, doing so, living

my Myanoshita days again.

There is much in Japan that is petty, much that is too material and not

a little that is disturbing; but Fuji is there too, dominating all, calm

and wise and lovely beyond description, and it would be Fuji that lured

me back.

AMERICA

DEMOCRACY AT HOME

My first experience of democracy-in-being followed swiftly upon boarding

the steamboat for San Francisco, when "Show this man Number 231" was the

American steward's command to a cabin boy. I had no objection to being

called a man: far from it; but after years of being called a gentleman

it was startling. This happened at Yokohama; and when, in the Customs

House at San Francisco, a porter wheeling a truck broke through a queue

of us waiting to obtain our quittances, with the careless warning, "Out

of the way, fellers!" I knew that here was democracy indeed.

I confess to liking it, although I was to be brought up with another

jolt when a notice-board on a grass-plot suddenly confronted me, bearing

the words:--

[Illustration: KEEP OFF. THIS MEANS YOU.]

But I like it. I like the tradition which, once your name is written in

the hotel reception book, makes you instantly "Mr. Lucas" to every one

in the place. There is a friendliness about it: the hotel is more of a

home, or at any rate, less of a barrack, because of it. And yet this

universal camaraderie has some odd lapses into formality. The members of

clubs in America are far more ceremonious with each other than we are in

England. In English clubs the prefix "Mr." is a solecism, but in

American clubs I have watched quite old friends and associates whose

greetings have been marked almost by pomposity and certainly by ritual.

Yet Americans, I should say, are heartier than we; more happy to be with

each other; less critical and exacting. They certainly spend less time

in discussing each other's foibles. That may be because the dollar is so

much more an absorbing theme, but more likely it is because America is a

democracy, and the theory of democracy, as I understand it, is to assume

that every man is a good fellow until the reverse is proved. I should

not like to say that the theory of those of us who live under a monarchy

is the opposite, but it seemed to me that Americans are more ready than

we to be sociable and tolerant.

Try as I might I could never be quick enough to get in first with that

delightful American greeting, "Pleased to meet you," or "Glad to know

you, Mr. Lucas." I pondered long on the best retort and at last

formulated this, but never dared to use it for fear that its genuineness

might be suspected: "I shall be sorry when we have to part."

SAN FRANCISCO

It was in San Francisco that I learned--and very quickly--that it is as

necessary to visit America in order to know what Americans are like as

it is to leave one's own country in order to know more about that.

Americans when abroad are less hearty, less revealing. They are either

suffering from a constraint or an over-assertiveness; and both moods may

be due to not being at home. In neither case are they so natural as at

home. I suppose that on soil not our own we all tend to be a little

over-anxious to proclaim our nationality, to maintain the distinction.

In our hats can perhaps be too firmly planted the invisible flag of our

country.

Be this as it may, I very quickly discerned a difference between

Americans in America and in England. I found them simple where I had

thought of them as the reverse, and now, after meeting others in various

parts of the country, even in complex and composite New York, I should

say that simplicity is the keynote of the American character. It is in

his simplicity that the American differs most from the European. Such

simplicity is perfectly consistent with the impatience, the desire for

novelty, for brevity, of the American people. We think of them as always

wishing to reduce life to formulae, as unwilling to express any

surprise, and these tendencies may easily be considered as signs of a

tiring civilisation. But in reality they are signs of youth too.

ROADS GOOD AND BAD

San Francisco I shall chiefly recollect (apart from personal reasons)

for the sparkling freshness and vigour of the air; for the extent and

variety of Golden Gate Park, where I found a bust of Beethoven, but no

sign of Bret Harte; for the vast reading-room in the library at

Berkeley, a university which is so enchantingly situated, beneath such a

sun, and in sight of such a bay, that I marvel that any work can be done

there at all; and for the miles and miles of perfect tarmac roads

fringed with burning eschscholtzias and gentle purple irises. That was

in April. I found elsewhere in America no roads comparable with these.

Even around Washington their condition was such that to ride in a motor-

car was to experience all the alleged benefits of horseback, while in

the Adirondacks, anywhere off the noble Theodore Roosevelt Memorial

Highway, with its "T.R." blazonings along the route, one's liver was

bent and broken. While I was in America the movement to purchase

Roosevelt's house as a national possession was in full swing, but this

Memorial Highway strikes the imagination with more force. That was an

inspiration, and I hope that the road will never be allowed to fall into

disrepair.

UNIVERSITIES, LOVE AND PRONUNCIATION

Watching the young men and maidens crowding to a lecture in the Hearst

Amphitheatre at Berkeley, under that glorious Californian sky, I was

struck by the sensible, frank intimacy of them all, and envied them the

advantages that must be theirs over the English methods of segregation

at the same age, which, by creating shyness and destroying familiarity,

tends to retard if not destroy the natural understanding which ought to

subsist between them and if it did would often make life afterwards so

much simpler.

I asked one of the professors to what extent marriages were made in

Berkeley, but he had no statistics. All he could say was that Cupid was

very little trouble to the authorities and that Mr. Hoover and Mrs.

Hoover first met each other as students at Stanford. And then I asked an

ex-member of one of the Sororities and she said that at college one was

a good deal in love and a good deal out of it. The romance rarely

persisted into later life.

She pronounced romance with the accent on the first syllable, whereas

somewhere half-way across the Atlantic the accent passes to the second;

and why such illogical things should be is a mystery. The differences

can be very disconcerting, especially if one refuses to give way. I had

an experience to the point when talking with some one in Chicago and

wishing to answer carefully his question as to the conditions under

which the poor of our great cities live. These are, in my observation,

infinitely worse in England than in America. Indeed I hardly saw any

poor in America at all--not poverty as we understand it. But I could not

frame my reply because "squalor" (which we pronounce as though it rhymed

with "mollor") was the only fitting epithet and he had just used it

himself, pronouncing it in the American way--or at any rate in his

American way--with a long "a." So I turned the subject.

Neither nation has any monopoly of reasonableness in pronunciation. The

American way of saying "advertisement" is more sensible than ours of

saying "adver?tisment," since we say "advertise" too. But then, although

the Americans say "inquire," just as we do, they illogically put the

stress on the first syllable when they talk about an "in?quiry." The

Tower of Babel is thus carried up one storey higher. The original idea

was merely to confuse languages; it cannot ever have been wished that

two friendly peoples should speak the same language differently.

But I have wandered far from Berkeley and Stanford. I am not sure as to

my course of conduct if I had a daughter of seventeen, but I am quite

convinced that if I had a son of that age I should send him to an

American university for two or three years after his English school. He

should then become a citizen of the Anglo-Saxon world indeed.

FIRST SIGNS OF PROHIBITION

We had met Prohibition first at Honolulu, not a few of the passengers

receiving the shock of their lives on learning at the hotel that only

"soft drinks" were permitted. Our second reminder of the new regime came

as we entered American waters off the Golden Gate and the ship's bar was

formally closed. And then, in San Francisco, we found "dry" land indeed.

In this connection let me say that in the hotel I made acquaintance with

an official of great power who was new to me: the buttoned boy who

rejoices in the proud title of Bell Captain. He gave me a private

insight into his precocity (but that is not the word, for all boys in

America are men too), and into his influence, by offering to supply me

with forbidden fruit, in the shape of whisky, at the modest figure of

$25 a bottle. He did not, however, say dollars: like most of his

compatriots (and it is a favourite word with them) he said something

between "dollars" and "dallars."

I had, a few days later, in Chicago, a similarly friendly offer from a

policeman of whom I had inquired the way. Recognizing an English accent,

he had instantly divined what my dearest wish must be. I then asked him

how prohibition was affecting the people on his beat. He said that a few

drunkards were less comfortable and a few wives more serene; but for the

most part he had seen no increase of happiness, and the extra money that

it provided was spent either on the movies, dress, or "other

foolishness." I did not allow him to refresh me. After a course of

American "tough" fiction, of which "Susan Lenox" remains most luridly in

the memory, I had a terror of all professional upholders of the law.

R.L.S.

Coming by chance upon the Robert Louis Stevenson memorial at San

Francisco, on the edge of Chinatown, I copied its inscription, and in

case any reader of these notes may have forgotten its trend I copy it

again here; for I do not suppose that its application was intended to

cease with the Californian city. It is counsel addressed to the

individual, but since nations are but individuals in quantity such

ideals cannot be repeated amiss:

To be honest; to be kind; to earn a little; to spend a little less; to

make upon the whole a family happier for his presence; to renounce when

that shall be necessary and not to be embittered; to keep a few friends,

but these without capitulation; above all, on the same grim condition,

to keep friends with himself--here is a task for all that man has of

fortitude and delicacy.

It is a far cry from San Francisco to Saranac, yet Stevenson is their

connecting chain, with the late Harry Widener's amazing collection of

Stevensoniana, in his memorial library at Harvard, as a link. The

Saranac cottage, which on the day of my visit was surrounded by the

sweetest lilac blooms that ever perfumed the air, is still a place of

pilgrimage, and one by one new articles of interest are being added to

the collection. It was pleasant indeed to find an English author thus

honoured. Later, in Central Park, New York, I was to find statues of

Shakespeare, Burns and Sir Walter Scott.

It was, oddly enough, in the Adirondacks that I came upon my only

experience of simplified spelling in the land of its birth. It was in

that pleasant home from home, the Lake Placid Club, where one is adjured

to close the door "tyt" as one leaves a room; where one drinks "cofi";

and where that most necessary and mysterious of the functionaries of

life, the physician, is able to watch his divinity dwindle and his

dignity disappear under the style "fizisn."

STORIES AND HUMOURISTS

I heard many stories in America, where every one is a raconteur, but

none was better than this, which my San Francisco host narrated, from

his own experience, as the most perfect example of an honest answer ever

given. When a boy, he said, he was much in the company of an old trapper

in the Californian mountains. During one of their expeditions together

he noticed that a camp meeting was to be held, and out of curiosity he

persuaded Reuben to attend it with him. Perched on a back seat, they

were watching the scene when an elderly Evangelical sister placed

herself beside the old hunter, laid her hand on his arm, and asked him

if he loved Jesus. He pondered for some moments and then replied thus:

"Waal, ma'am, I can't go so far as to say that I love Him. I can't go so

far as that. But, by gosh, I'll say this--I ain't got nothin' agin Him."

The funniest spontaneous thing I heard said was the remark of a farmer

in the Adirondacks in reply to my question, Had they recovered up there,

from the recent war? "Yes," he said, they had; adding brightly, "Quite a

war, wasn't it?"

In a manner of speaking all Americans are humourists. Just as all French

people are wits by reason of the epigrammatic structure of their

language, so are all Americans humourists by reason of the national

stores of picturesque slang and analogy to which they have access. I

think that this tendency to resort to a common stock instead of striving

after individual exactitude and colour is to be deplored. It discourages

thought where thought should be encouraged. Adults are, of course,

beyond redemption, but parents might at least do something about it with

their children. One of the cleverest American writers whom I met made no

effort whatever to get beyond these accepted phrases as he narrated one

racy incident after another. With the pen in his hand (or, more

probably, the typewriter under his fingers) his sense of epithet is

precise; but in his conversational stories men were as mad "as Sam

Hill," injuries hurt "like hell," and a knapsack was as heavy "as the

devil." We all laughed; but he should have had more of the artist's

pride.

Three American professional humourists whom I had the good fortune to

meet and be with for some time were Irvin Cobb, Don Marquis, and Oliver

Herford, each authentic and each so different. Beneath Mr. Cobb's fun is

a mass of ripe experience and sagacity. However playful he may be on the

surface one is aware of an almost Johnsonian universality beneath. It

would not be extravagant to call his humour the bloom on the fruit of

the tree of knowledge (I am talking now only of the three as I found

them in conversation). Don Marquis, while equally serious (and all the

best humourists are serious at heart), has a more grotesque fancy and is

more of a reformer, or, at any rate, a rebel. His dissatisfaction with

hypocrisy provoked a scorn that Mr. Cobb is too elemental to entertain.

Some day perhaps Don Marquis will induce an editor to print the

exercises in unorthodoxy which he has been writing and which, in

extract, he repeated to us with such unction; but I doubt it. They are

too searching. But that so busy a man should turn aside from his work to

dabble in religious satire seemed to me a very interesting thing; for

nothing is so unprofitable--except to the honest soul of him who

conceives it.

One of Don Marquis's more racy stories which I recollect is of a loafer

in a country town who had the habit of dropping into the store every day

at the time the free cheese was set on the counter, and buying very

little in return. When the time came for the privilege to be withdrawn

the loafer was outraged and aghast. Addressing the storekeeper (his

friend for years) he summed up his ungenerosity in these terms: "Your

soul, Henry," he said, "is so mean, that if there were a million souls

like it in the belly of a flea, they'd be so far apart they couldn't

hear each other holler."

As for Oliver Herford, he is an elf, a sprite, a creature of fantasy,

who may be--and, I rejoice to say, is--in this world, but certainly is

not of it. This Oliver is in the line of Puck and Mercutio and Lamb and

Hood and other lovers and makers of nonsense, and it is we who ask for

"more." He had just brought out his irresponsible but very searching

exercise in cosmogony, "This Giddy Globe," dedicated to President Wilson

("with all his faults he quotes me still") and this was the first

indigenous work I read on American soil. Oliver Herford is perhaps best

known by his "Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten," and there is a kitten also

in "This Giddy Globe":

"Hurray!" cried the Kitten, "Hurray!"

As he merrily set the sails,

"I sail o'er the ocean to-day

To look at the Prince of Wales."

--this was when the Prince was making his triumphant visit to New York

in 1919--

"But, Kitten," I said dismayed,

"If you live through the angry gales

You know you will be afraid

To look at the Prince of Wales."

Said the Kitten, "No such thing!

Why should he make me wince?

If a Cat may look at a King

A Kitten may look at a Prince!"

This reminds me that the story goes that when the Prince expressed his

admiration for Fifth Avenue he was congratulated upon having "said a

mouthful." Beyond a mouthful, as an encomium of sagacity or

sensationalism in speech, there is but one advance and that is when one

says "an earful."

THE CARS

The journey from San Francisco to Chicago, once the fruit country is

passed, is drearily tedious, and I was never so tired of a train. The

spacious compartments that one travelled in on the Indian journeys,

where there are four arm-chairs and a bath-room, are a bad preparation

for the long narrow American cars packed with humanity, and for the very

inadequate washing-room, which is also the negro attendant's bed-

chamber: "Although," he explained to me, "when the car isn't full I

always sleep in Berth Number 1." If the night could be indefinitely

prolonged, these journeys would be more tolerable; but for the general

comfort the sleeping berths must be converted into seats at an early

hour. In addition to books, I had, as a means of beguilement, the

society of a returned exile from the Philippines, who told me the story

of his life, showed me the necklace he was taking home to his daughter's

wedding, and asked my advice as to the wisdom or unwisdom of marrying

again, the lady of his wavering choice having been at school with him in

New England and being now a widow in Nebraska with property of her own.

Besides being thus garrulous and open, he was the most helpful man I

ever met, acting as a nurse to the three or four restless children in

the car, and even producing from his bag a pair of scissors and a bottle

of gum with which to make dolls' paper clothes. Never in my life have I

called a stranger "Ed" on such short acquaintance; never have I been

called "Poppa" so often by the peevish progeny of others.

It was on this train that I began to realise how much thirstier the

Americans are than we. The passengers were continually filling and

emptying the little cups that are stacked beside the fountains in the

corridors, and long before we reached Chicago the cups had all been

used. In England only children drink water at odd times and they not to

excess. But in America every one drinks water, and the water is there

for drinking, pure and cold and plentiful. It is beside the bed, in the

corners of offices, awaiting you at meals, jingling down the passages of

hotels, bubbling in the streets. In English restaurants, water bottles

are rarely supplied until asked for; in our hotel bedrooms they seldom

bear lifting to the light. As to whether the general health of the

Americans is superior or inferior to ours by reason of this water-

drinking custom, I have no information; but figures would be

interesting.

CHICAGO

In Chicago the weather was wet and cold, and it was not until after I

had left that I learned of the presence there of certain literary

collections which I may now perhaps never see. But I spent much time in

the Museum, where there is one of the finest Hobbemas in the world, and

where two such different creative artists as Claude Monet and Josiah

Wedgwood are especially honoured. But the chief discovery for me was the

sincere and masterly work in landscape of George Inness, my first

impression of whom was to be fortified when I passed on to Boston, and

reinforced in the Hearn collection in the Metropolitan Museum in New

York.

It was in Chicago, in the Marshall Field Book Department--which is to

ordinary English bookshops like a liner to a houseboat--that I first

realised how intense is the interest which America takes in foreign

contemporary literature. In England the translation has a certain vogue

--Mrs. Garnett's supple and faithful renderings of Turgenev, Tolstoi,

Dostoievski, and Tchekov have, for example, a great following--but we do

not adventure much beyond the French and the Russians; whereas I learn

that English versions of hundreds of other foreign books are eagerly

bought in America. Such curiosity seems to me to be very sensible. I was

surprised also to find tables packed high with the modern drama. In

England the printed play is not to the general taste.

It was in Chicago that I found "window-shopping" at its most

enterprising. In San Francisco the costumiers' windows were thronged all

Sunday, but in Chicago they are brilliantly lighted till midnight, long

after closing hours, so that late passers-by may mark down desirable

things to buy on the morrow.

The spirited equestrian statue of General John A. Logan, in a waste

space by Michigan Avenue, which I could see from my bedroom window, was

my first and by no means the least satisfying experience of American

sculpture on its native soil--to be face to face with St. Gaudens'

figure of "Grief" in Rock Creek Cemetery, at Washington, having long

been a desire. In time I came to see that beautiful conception, and I

saw also the fine Shaw monument in Boston, fine both in idea and in

execution; and the Sheridan, by the Plaza Hotel in New York; and the

Farragut in Madison Square; and the Pilgrim in Philadelphia--all the

work of the same firm, sensitive hand, a replica of whose Lincoln is now

to be seen at Westminster.

The statue seems almost as natural a part of civic ornament in America

as it is in France, and is not in England; and the standard as a rule is

high. In particular I like the many horsemen--Anthony Wayne dominating

the landscape at Valley Forge; and George Washington again and again,

and not least in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia (where there is also a

bronze roughrider realistically set on a cliff--as though from Ambrose

Bierce's famous story--by Frederic Remington). American painters can too

often suggest predecessors, usually French, but the sculptors have a

strength and directness of their own, and it would not surprise me if

some of the best statues of the future came from their country. No one

would say that all American civic sculpture is good. There is a gigantic

bust of Washington Irving behind New York's Public Library which would

be better away; nor are the lions that guard that splendid institution

superabundantly leonine; but the traveller is more charmed than

depressed by the marble and bronze effigies that meet his eye--and few

witnesses have been able to say that of England. Among the more

remarkable public works I might name the symbolical figures on the steps

of the Boston Free Library, and the frieze in deep relief on the

Romanesque church on Park Avenue in New York, and I found something big

and impressive in the Barnard groups at Harrisburg. Many of the little

bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum--at the other extreme--are exquisite.

THE MOVIES

We have our cinema theatres in England in some abundance, but the cinema

is not yet in the blood here as in America. In America picture-palaces

are palaces indeed--with gold and marble, and mural decorations, built

to seat thousands--and every newspaper has its cinema page, where the

activities of the movie stars in their courses are chronicled every

morning. Moreover, America is the home of the industry; and rightly so,

for it has, I should say, been abundantly proved that Americans are the

only people who really understand both cinema acting and cinema

production. Italy, France and England make a few pictures, but their

efforts are half-hearted: not only because acting for the film is a new

and separate art, but because atmospheric conditions are better in

America than in Europe.

It was in Chicago that I had my only opportunity of seeing cinema stars

in the flesh. The rain falling, as it seems to do there with no more

effort or fatigue to itself than in Manchester, I had, one afternoon, to

change my outdoor plans and take refuge at the matinee of a musical

comedy called "Sometime," with Frank Tinney in the leading part. Tinney,

I may say, during his engagement in London some years ago, became so

great a favourite that one performer has been flourishing on an

imitation of him ever since. The play had been in progress only for a

few minutes when Frank, in his capacity as a theatre doorkeeper, was

presented by his manager with a tip. A dialogue, which to the trained

ear was obviously more or less an improvisation, then followed:

_Manager_: "What will you do with that dollar, Frank?"

_Frank_: "I shall go to the movies. I always go to the movies when

there's a Norma Talmadge picture. Ask me why I always go to the movies

when there's a Norma Talmadge picture."

_Manager_: "Why do you always go to the movies when there's a Norma

Talmadge picture, Frank?"

_Frank_: "I go because, I go because she's my favourite actress.

(_Applause_.) Ask me why Norma Talmadge is my favourite actress."

_Manager_: "Why is Norma Talmadge your favourite actress, Frank?"

_Frank_: "Norma Talmadge is my favourite actress because she is

always saving her honour. I've seen her saving it seventeen times.

(_To the audience_) You like Norma Talmadge, don't you?" (_Applause

from the audience_.)

_Frank_: "Then wouldn't you like to see her as she really is?

(_To a lady sitting with friends in a box_.) Stand up, Norma, and

let the audience see you."

_Here a slim lady with a tense, eager, pale face and a mass of hair

stood up and bowed. Immense enthusiasm_.

_Frank_: "That's Norma Talmadge. You do like saving your honour,

don't you, Norma? And now (_to the audience_) wouldn't you like to

see Norma's little sister, Constance? (_More applause_.) Stand up,

Constance, and let the audience see you."

Here another slim lady bowed her acknowledgments and the play was

permitted to proceed.

What America is going to do with the cinema remains to be seen, but I,

for one, deplore the modern tendency of novelists to be lured by

American money to write for it. If the cinema wants stories from

novelists let it take them from the printed books. One has but to

reflect upon what might have happened had the cinema been invented a

hundred years ago, to realise my disturbance of mind. With Mr. Lasky's

millions to tempt them Dickens would have written "David Copperfield"

and Thackeray "Vanity Fair," not for their publishers and as an

endowment to millions of grateful readers in perpetuity, but as plots

for the immediate necessity of the film, with a transitory life of a few

months in dark rooms. Of what new "David Copperfields" and "Vanity

Fairs" the cinema is to rob us we shall not know; but I hold that the

novelist who can write a living book is a traitor to his art and

conscience if he prefers the easy money of the film. Readers are to be

considered before the frequenters of Picture Palaces. His privilege is

to beguile and amuse and refresh through the ages: not to snatch

momentary triumphs and disappear.

The evidence of the moment is more on the side of the pessimist than the

optimist. I found in America no trace of interest in such valuable

records as the Kearton pictures of African jungle life or the Ponting

records of the Arctic Zone. For the moment the whole energy of the

gigantic cinema industry seemed to be directed towards the filming of

human stories and the completest beguilement, without the faintest

infusion of instruction or idealism, of the many-headed mob. In short,

to provide "dope." Whether so much "dope" is desirable, is the question

to be answered. That poor human nature needs a certain amount, is beyond

doubt. But so much? And do we all need it, or at any rate deserve it? is

another question. Sometimes indeed I wonder whether those of us who have

our full share of senses ought to go to the cinema at all. It may be

that its true purpose is to be the dramatist of the deaf.

THE AMERICAN FACE

Perhaps it is one of the travellers' illusions (and we are very

susceptible to them), but I have the impression that American men are

more alike than the English are. It may be because there are fewer

idiosyncrasies in male attire, for in America every one wears the same

kind of hat; but I think not. In spite of the mixed origin of most

Americans, a national type of face has been evolved to which they seem

satisfied almost universally to pay allegiance. Again and again in the

streets I have been about to accost strangers to whom I felt sure I had

recently been introduced, discovering just in time that they were merely

doubles. In England I fancy there is more individuality in appearance.

If it is denied that American faces are more true to one type than ours,

I shall reopen the attack by affirming that American voices are beyond

question alike. My position in these two charges may be illustrated by

notices that I saw fixed to gates at the docks in San Francisco. On one

were the words "No Smoking"; on the other "Positively No Smoking."

And what about the science of physiognomy? I have been wondering if

Lavater is to be trusted outside Europe. In China and Japan I was

continually perplexed, for I saw so many men who obviously were

successful--leaders and controllers--but who were without more than the

rudiments of a nose on which to support their glasses; and yet I have

been brought up to believe that without a nose of some dimensions it was

idle to hope for worldly eminence. Again, in America, is it possible

that all these massive chins and firm aquiline beaks are ruling the

roost and reaching whatever goal they set out for? I doubt it.

The average American face is, I think, keener than ours and healthier.

One sees fewer ruined faces than in English cities, fewer men and women

who have lost self-respect and self-control. The American people as a

whole strike the observer as being more prosperous, more alert and

ambitious, than the English. Where I found mean streets they were always

in the occupation of aliens.

To revert to the matter of clothes, the American does as little as

possible to make things easy for the conjectural observer. In England

one can base guesses of some accuracy on attire. In a railway carriage

one can hazard without any great risk of error the theory that this man

is in trade and that in a profession, that another is a stockbroker, and

a fourth a country squire. But America is full of surprises, due to the

uniformity of clothing and a certain carelessness which elevates comfort

to a ritual. The man you think of as a millionaire may be a drummer, the

drummer a millionaire. Again, in England people are known to a certain

extent by the hotels they stay at, the restaurants they eat at, and the

class in which they travel. Such superficial guides fail one in America.

PROHIBITION AGAIN

I can best indicate, without the mechanical assistance of dates, the

time of my sojourn in New York by saying that, during those few weeks,

Woodrow Wilson's successor was being sought, the possibility of the

repeal of the Prohibition Act was a matter of excited interest, and

"Babe" Ruth was the national hero. During this period I saw the

President sitting on the veranda of the White House; I had opportunities

of honouring Prohibition in the breach as well as in the observance; and

these eyes were everlastingly cheered and enriched by the spectacle of

the "Babe" (who is a baseball divinity) lifting a ball over the Polo

Ground pavilion into Manhattan Field. I hold, then, that I cannot be

said to have been unlucky or to have wasted my time.

I found (this was in the spring of 1920) Prohibition the universal

topic: could it last, and should it last? In England we are accused of

talking always of the weather. In America, where there is no weather,

nothing but climate, that theme probably was never popular. Even if it

once were, however, it had given way to Prohibition. At every lunch or

dinner table at which I was present Prohibition was a topic. And how

could it be otherwise?--for if my host was a "dry" man, he had to begin

by apologising for having nothing cheering to offer, and if he possessed

a cellar it was impossible not to open the ball by congratulating him on

his luck and his generosity. Meanwhile the guests were comparing notes

as to the best substitutes for alcoholic beverages, exchanging recipes,

or describing their adventures with private stills.

I visited a young couple in a charming little cottage in one of the

garden cities near New York, and found them equally divided in their

solicitude over a baby on the top floor and a huge jar in the basement

which needed constant skimming if the beer was to be worth drinking.

One effect of Prohibition which I was hoping for, if not actually

expecting, failed to materialise. I had thought that the standard of

what are called T.B.M. (Tired Business Men) theatrical shows might be

higher if the tendency of alcohol to make audiences more tolerant (as it

undoubtedly can do in London) were no longer operative. But these

entertainments seemed, under teetotallers, no better.

THE BALL GAME

After seeing my first ball game or so I was inclined to suggest

improvements; but now that I have attended more I am disposed to think

that those in authority know more about it than I do, and that such

blemishes as it appears to have are probably inevitable. For one thing,

I thought that the outfield had too great an advantage. For another, not

unassociated with that objection, I thought that the home-run hit was

not sufficiently rewarded above the quite ordinary hit--"bunch-hit," is

it?--that brings in a man or men. In the English game of "Rounders," the

parent of baseball, a home-run hit either restores life to a man already

out or provides the batting side with a life in reserve. To put a

premium of this kind on so noble an achievement is surely not fantastic.

So I thought. And yet I see now that the game must not be lengthened, or

much of its character would go. It is its concentrated American fury

that is its greatest charm. If a three-day cricket match were so packed

with emotion we should all die of heart failure.

I thought, too, that it is illogical that a ground stroke behind the

diamond should be a no-ball, and yet, should that ball be in the air and

caught, the striker should be out. I thought it an odd example of

lenience to allow the batsman as many strokes behind the catcher as he

chanced to make. But the more baseball I see the more it enchants me as

a spectacle, and these early questionings are forgotten.

Baseball and cricket cannot be compared, because they are as different

as America and England; they can only be contrasted. Indeed, many of the

differences between the peoples are reflected in the games; for cricket

is leisurely and patient, whereas baseball is urgent and restless.

Cricket can prosper without excitement, while excitement is baseball's

life-blood, and so on: the catalogue could be indefinitely extended.

But, though a comparison is futile, it may be interesting to note some

of the divergences between the games. One of the chief is that baseball

requires no specially prepared ground, whereas cricket demands turf in

perfect order. Bad weather, again, is a more serious foe to the English

than to the American game, for if the turf is soaked we cannot go on,

and hence the number of drawn or unfinished matches in the course of a

season. A two hours' game, such as baseball is, can, however, always be

played off.

In baseball the pitcher's ball must reach the batter before it touches

the ground; in cricket, if the ball did not touch the ground first and

reach the batsman on the bound, no one would ever be out at all, for the

other ball, the full-pitch as we call it, is, with a flat bat, too easy

to hit, for our bowlers swerve very rarely: it is the contact with the

ground which enables them to give the ball its extra spin or break.

Full-pitches are therefore very uncommon. In cricket a bowler who

delivered the ball with the action of a pitcher would be disqualified

for "throwing": it is one of the laws of cricket that the bowler's elbow

must not be bent.

In cricket (I mean in the first-class variety of the game) the decisions

of the umpire are never questioned, either by players or public.

In baseball there are but two strokes for the batter: either the

"swipe," or "slog," as we call it, where he uses all his might, or the

"bunt," usually a sacrificial effort; in cricket there are scores of

strokes, before the wicket, behind it, and at every angle to it. These

the cricketer is able to make because the bat is flat and wide, and he

holds it both vertically and at a slant, as occasion demands, and is

allowed, at his own risk, to run out to meet the ball. In the early days

of cricket, a hundred and fifty years ago, the bat was like a baseball

club, but curved, and the only strokes then were much what the only

baseball strokes are now--the full-strength hit and the stopping hit. So

long as the pitcher delivers the ball in the air it is probable that the

baseball club will remain as it is; but should the evolution of the game

allow the pitcher to make use of the ground, then the introduction of a

flattened club is probable. But let us not look ahead. All that we can

be sure of is that, since baseball is American, it will change.

To resume the catalogue of contrast. In baseball the batsman must run

for every fair hit; in cricket he may choose which hits to run for.

In baseball a man's desire is to hit the ball in the air beyond the

fielders; in cricket, though a man would like to do this, his side is

better served if he hits every ball along the ground.

In baseball no man can have more than a very small number of hits in a

match; in cricket he can be batting for a whole day, and then again

before the match is over. There are instances of batsmen making over 400

runs before being out.

Another difference between the games is that in cricket we use a new

ball only at the beginning of a fresh inning (of which there cannot be

more than four in a match) and when each 200 runs have been scored; and

(this will astonish the American reader) when the ball is hit among the

people it is returned. I have seen such rapid voluntary surrenders at

baseball very seldom, and so much of a "fan" have I become that the

spectacle has always been accompanied in my breast by pain and contempt.

I had the gratification of receiving from the burly John McGraw an

autograph ball as a souvenir of a visit to the Polo Ground. I put it in

my pocket hurriedly, conscious of the risk I ran among a nation of ball-

stealers in possessing such a trophy; and I got away with it. But I am

sure that had it been a ball hit out of the ground by the mighty "Babe"

Ruth, which--recovering it by some supernatural means--he had handed to

me in public, I should not have emerged alive, or, if alive, not in the

ball's company.

In cricket the wicket-keeper, who, like the baseball catcher, is

protected, although he has no mask, is the most difficult man to obtain,

because he has the hardest time and the least public approbation; in

baseball the catcher is a hero and every boy aspires to his mitt.

In cricket no player makes more than three hundred pounds a season,

unless it is his turn for his one and only benefit, when he may make a

thousand pounds more. But most players do not reach such a level of

success that a benefit is their lot. But baseballers earn enormous sums.

If a match could be arranged between eleven cricketers and eleven

baseballers, the cricketers to be allowed to bowl and the baseballers to

pitch, the cricketers to use their own bats and the baseballers their

own clubs, I fancy that the cricketers would win; for the difficulty of

hitting our bowling with a club would be greater than of hitting their

pitching with a bat. But their wonderful fielding and far more accurate

and swifter throwing than ours might just save them. Such throwing we

see only very rarely, for good throwing is no longer insisted upon in

cricket, much to the game's detriment. That old players should lose

their shoulders is natural--and, of course, our players remain in first-

class cricket for many years longer than ball champions--but there is no

excuse for the young men who have taken advantage of a growing laxity in

this matter. Chief of the few cricketers who throw with any of the

terrible precision of a baseball field is Hobbs. It must be borne in

mind, however, that cricket does not demand such constant throwing at

full speed as baseball does; for in cricket, as I have said, the batsman

may choose what hits he will run for, and if he chooses only the

perfectly safe ones the fieldsmen are never at high pressure. There is

also nothing in cricket quite to compare with base-stealing.

When it comes to catching, the percentage of missed catches is far

higher at cricket than at baseball; but there are good reasons for this.

One is that in baseball a glove is worn; another that in baseball all

catches come to the fieldsmen with long or sufficient notice. The

fieldsmen are all, except the catcher, in front of the batsmen; there is

nothing to compare with the unexpected nimbleness that our point and

slips have to display.

In the hypothetical contest that I have suggested, between baseballers

and cricketers, if the conditions were nominally equal and the

cricketers had to pitch like baseballers and the baseballers to use the

English bat, why then the baseballers would win handsomely.

Baseball, I fancy, will not be acclimatised in England. We had our

chance when London was full of American soldiers and we did not take it.

But we were very grateful to them for playing the game in our midst, for

the authorities were so considerate as to let them play on Sundays

(which we are never allowed to do) and I was one of those who hoped that

this might be the thin end of the wedge and Sunday cricket also be

permitted. But no; when the war was over and the Americans left us, the

old Sabbatarianism reasserted itself. If, however, we ever exchanged

national games, and cricket were played in America and baseball in

England, it is the English spectator who would have the better of the

exchange. I am convinced that although we should quickly find baseball

diverting, nothing would ever persuade an American crowd to be otherwise

than bored by cricket.

SKYSCRAPERS

Perhaps if I had reached New York from the sea the skyscrapers would

have struck me more violently. But I had already seen a few in San

Francisco (and wondered at and admired the courage which could build so

high after the earthquake of 1906), and more in Chicago, all ugly; so

that when I came to New York and found that the latest architects were

not only building high, but imposing beauty on these mammoth structures,

surprise was mingled with delight. No matter how many more millions of

dollars are expended on that strange medley of ancient forms which go to

make up New York's new Cathedral, where Romanesque and Gothic seem

already to be ready for their divorce, the Woolworth Building will be

New York's true fane. Mr. Cass Gilbert, the designer of that graceful

immensity, not only gave commerce its most notable monument (to date),

but removed for ever the slur upon skyscrapers. The Woolworth Building

does not scrape the sky; it greets it, salutes it with a _beau

geste_. And I would say something similar of the Bush Building, with

its alabaster chapel in the air which becomes translucent at night; and

the Madison Square Tower (whose clock face, I noticed, has the amazing

diameter of three storeys); and the Burroughs Welcome Building on 41st

Street, with its lovely perpendicular lines; and that immense cube of

masonry on Park Avenue which bursts into flower, so to speak, at the top

in the shape of a very beautiful loggia. But even if these adornments

become, as I hope, the rule, one could not resent the ordinary

structural elephantiasis a moment after realising New York's physical

conditions. A growing city built on a narrow peninsula is unable to

expand laterally and must, therefore, soar. The problem was how to make

it soar with dignity, and the problem has been solved.

In the old days when brown stone was the only builders' medium New York

must have been a drab city indeed; or so I gather from the few ancient

typical residences that remain. There are a few that are new, too, but

for the most part the modern house is of white stone. Gayest of all is,

I suppose, that vermilion-roofed florist's on Fifth Avenue.

One has to ascend the Woolworth Building to appreciate at a blow with

what discretion the original settlers of New York made their choice. It

is interesting, too, to watch Broadway--which, for all I know, is the

longest street in the world--starting at one's feet on its lawless

journey to Albany: lawless because it is almost the only sinuous thing

in this city of parallelograms and has the effrontery to cross

diagonally both Fifth Avenue and Sixth. Before leaving the Woolworth

Building, I would say that there seemed to me something rather comically

paradoxical in being charged 50 cents for access to the top of a

structure which was erected to celebrate the triumph of a commercial

genius whose boast it was to have made his fortune out of articles sold

at a rate never higher than 10 cents.

Having dallied sufficiently on the summit--there are a trifle of fifty-

eight floors, but an express lift makes nothing of them--I continued the

implacable career of the tripper by watching for a while the deafening

kerb market, which presented on that morning an odd appearance, more

like Yarmouth beach than a financial centre, for there had been rain,

and all the street operators were in sou'westers and sea-boots. There

can be spasms of similar excitement in London, in the neighbourhood of

Capel Court, but we have nothing that compares so closely with this

crowd as Tattersall's Ring at Epsom just before the Derby.

A PLEA FOR THE AQUARIUM

It was a relief to resume my programme by entering that abode of the

dumb and detached--the aquarium in Battery Park. For the kerb uproar

"the uncommunicating muteness of fishes" was the only panacea. The Bronx

Zoo is not, I think, except in the matter of buffalo and deer paddocks,

so good as ours in London, but it has this shining advantage--it is

free. So also is the Aquarium in Battery Park, and it was pleasing to

see how crowded the place can be. In England all interest in living

fish, except as creatures to be coaxed towards hooks and occasionally

retained there, has vanished; on the site of old Westminster Aquarium

the Wesleyans now manage their finances and determine their circuits,

while the Brighton Aquarium, once famous all the world over, is a

variety hall with barely a fin to its name.

After seeing the aquarium in Honolulu, which is like a pelagic rainbow

factory, and the aquarium in New York with all its strange and beautiful

denizens, I am a little ashamed of our English apathy. To maintain

picture galleries, where, however beautiful and chromatic, all is dead,

and be insensitive to the loveliness of fish, in hue, in shape and in

movement, is not quite pardonable.

ENGLISH AND FRENCH INFLUENCES

In essentials America is American, but when it comes to inessentials, to

trimmings, her dependence on old England was noticeable again and again

as I walked about New York. The fashion which, at the moment, the print

shops were fostering was for our racing, hunting and coaching coloured

prints of a century ago, while in the gallery of the distinguished

little Grolier Club I found an exhibition of the work of Randolph

Caldecott and Kate Greenaway. In such old bookshops as I visited all the

emphasis was--just then--laid upon Keats and Lamb and Shelley, whose

first editions and presentation copies seem to be continually making the

westward journey. I had not been in New York twenty-four hours before

Keats' "Lamia," 1820--with an inscription from the author to Charles

Lamb--the very copy from which, I imagine, Lamb wrote his review, was in

my hands; but it would have been far beyond my means even if the pound

were not standing at 3.83. These "association" books, in which American

collectors take especial pleasure, can be very costly. At a sale soon

after I left New York, seven presentation copies of Dickens' books,

containing merely the author's signed inscription, realised 4870

dollars. To continue, in Wanamaker's old curiosity department I found

little but English furniture and odds and ends, at prices which in their

own country would have been fantastically high. In the "Vanity Fair"

department, however (as I think it is called), the source was French. I

suppose that French influence must be at the back of all the costumiers

and jewellers of New York, but the shops themselves are far more

spacious than those in Paris and not less well-appointed. Tiffany's is a

palace; all it lacks is a name, but its splendid anonymity is, I take

it, a point of honour.

It used to be said that good Americans when they died went to Paris. The

Parisian lure no doubt is still powerful; but every day I should guess

that more of Paris comes to America. The upper parts of New York have

boulevards and apartment houses very like the real thing, and I noticed

that the architecture of France exerts a special attraction for the rich

man decreeing himself a pleasure dome. There are millionaires'

residences in New York that might have been transplanted not only from

the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, but from Touraine itself; while when I

made my pilgrimage to Mr. Widener's, just outside Philadelphia, I found

Rembrandt's "Mill," and Manet's dead bull-fighter, and a Vermeer, and a

little meadow painted divinely by Corot, and El Greco's family group,

and Donatello's St. George, and one of the most lovely scenes that ever

was created by Turner's enchanted brush, all enshrined in a palace which

Louis Seize might have built.

But America is even more French than this. Her women can be not less

_soignees_ than those of France, although they suggest a cooler

blood and less dependence on male society; her bread and coffee are

better than France's best. Moreover, when it comes to night and the

Broadway constellations challenge the darkness, New York leaves Paris

far behind. For every cabaret and supper resort that Paris can provide,

New York has three; and for every dancing floor in Paris, New York has

thirty. Good Americans, however, will still remain faithful to their old

posthumous love, if only for her wine.

Apropos of American women, their position struck me as very different

from the position of women with us. English women are deferential to

their husbands; they are content to be relegated to the background on

all occasions when they are not wanted. They are dependent. They seldom

wear an air of triumph and rarely take the lead. But American women are

complacent and assured, they do most of the talking, make most of the

plans: if they are not seen, it is because they are in the background;

they are either active prominently elsewhere or are high on pedestals.

With each other they are mostly or often humorously direct, whereas with

men they seem to adopt an ironical or patronising attitude. American

women seem also to have a curious power of attracting to themselves

other women who admire them and foster their self-esteem. And, for all

that I know, these satellites have satellites too. Their federacy almost

amounts to a solid secret society; not so much against men, for men must

provide the sinews of war and other comforts, but for their own

satisfaction. Both sexes appear not to languish when alone.

SKY-SIGNS AND CONEY ISLAND

All visitors to New York speak of the exhilaration of its air, and I can

but repeat their testimony. After the first few days the idea of going

to bed became an absurdity.

Among the peculiarly beautiful effects that America produces, sky signs

must be counted high. I had seen some when in San Francisco against the

deep Californian night, and they captivated the startled vision; but the

reckless profusion and movement of the Great White Way, as I turned out

of 42nd Street on my first evening in New York, came as something more

than a surprise: a revelation of wilful gaiety. We have normally nothing

in England to compare with it. Nor can we have even our Earl's Court

exhibition imitations of it so long as coal is so rare and costly. But

though we had the driving power for the electricity we could never get

such brilliance, for the clear American atmosphere is an essential ally.

In our humid airs all the diamond glints would be blurred.

For the purest beauty of traceries of light against a blue background

one must go, however, not to Broadway, which is too bizarre, but to Luna

Park on Coney Island. Odd that it should be there, in that bewildering

medley of sound and restlessness, that an extreme of loveliness should

be found; but I maintain that it is so, that nothing more strangely and

voluptuously beautiful could be seen than all those minarets and domes,

with their lines and curves formed by myriad lamps, turning by contrast

the heavens into an ocean of velvet blue, mysterious and soft and

profound.

Only periodically--when we have exhibitions at Earl's Court or at

Olympia--is there in England anything like Coney Island. At Blackpool in

August, and on Hampstead Heath on Bank Holidays, a corresponding spirit

of revelry is attempted, but it is not so natural, and is vitiated by a

self-conscious determination to be gay and by not a little vulgarity.

The revellers of Steeplechase Park seemed to me to be more genuine even

than the crowds that throng the Fete de Neuilly; and a vast deal

happier.

One very striking difference between Coney Island and the French fair is

the absence of children from New York's "safety-valve," as some one

described it to me. I saw hardly any. It is as though once again the

child's birthday gifts had been appropriated by its elders; but as a

matter of fact the Parks of Steeplechase and Luna were, I imagine,

designed deliberately for adults. Judging by the popularity of the

chutes and the whips, the switchbacks and the witching waves, eccentric

movement has a peculiar attraction for the American holiday-maker. As

some one put it, there is no better way, or at any rate no more thorough

way, of throwing young people together. Middle-aged people, too. But the

observer receives no impression of moral disorder. High spirits are the

rule, and impropriety is the exception. Even in the auditorium at

Steeplechase Park, where the _cognoscenti_ assemble to witness the

discomfiture of the uninitiated, there is nothing but harmless laughter

as the skirts fly up before the unsuspected blast. Such a performance in

England, were it permitted, would degenerate into ugliness; in France,

too, it would make the alien spectator uncomfortable. But the essential

public chastity of the Americans--I am not sure that I ought not here to

write civilisation of the Americans--emerges triumphant.

It was at Coney Island that I came suddenly upon the Pig Slide and had a

new conception of what quadrupeds can do for man.

The Pig Slide, which was in one of the less noisy quarters of Luna Park,

consisted of an enclosure in which stood a wooden building of two

storeys, some five yards wide and three high. On the upper storey was a

row of six or eight cages, in each of which dwelt a little live pig, an

infant of a few weeks. In the middle of the row, descending to the

ground, was an inclined board, with raised edges, such as is often

installed in swimming-baths to make diving automatic, and beneath each

cage was a hole a foot in diameter. The spectators and participants

crowded outside the enclosure, and the thing was to throw balls, which

were hired for the purpose, into the holes. Nothing could exceed the

alert and eager interest taken by the little pigs in the efforts of the

ball-throwers. They quivered on their little legs; they pressed their

little noses against the bars of the cages; their little eyes sparkled;

their tails (the only public corkscrews left in America) curled and

uncurled and curled again: and with reason, for whereas if you missed--

as was only too easy--nothing happened: if you threw accurately the fun

began, and the fun was also theirs.

This is what occurred. First a bell rang and then a spring released the

door of the cage immediately over the hole which your ball had entered,

so that it swung open. The little pig within, after watching the

previous infirmity of your aim with dejection, if not contempt, had

pricked up his ears on the sound of the bell, and now smiled a gratified

smile, irresistible in infectiousness, and trotted out, and, with the

smile dissolving into an expression of absolute beatitude, slid

voluptuously down the plank: to be gathered in at the foot by an

attendant and returned to its cage all ready for another such adventure.

It was for these moments and their concomitant changes of countenance

that you paid your money. To taste the triumph of good marksmanship was

only a fraction of your joy; the greater part of it consisted in

liberating a little prisoner and setting in motion so much ecstasy.

THE PRESS

America is a land of newspapers, and the newspapers are very largely the

same. To a certain extent many of them are exactly the same, for the

vastness of the country makes it possible to syndicalise various

features, so that you find Walt Mason's sagacious and merry and punctual

verse, printed to look like prose but never disappointing the ear, in

one of the journals that you buy wherever you are, in San Francisco,

Salt Lake City, Chicago or New York; and Mr. Montagu's topical rhymes in

another; and the daily adventures of Mutt and Jeff, who are national

heroes, in a third. Every day, for ever, do those and other regular

features occur in certain of the papers: which is partly why no American

ever seems to confine himself, as is our custom, to only one.

Another and admirable feature of certain American papers is a column

edited by a man of letters, whose business it is to fill it every day,

either with the blossoms of his own intelligence or of outside

contributors, or a little of each: such a column as Don Marquis edits

for _The Sun_, called "The Sundial," and Franklin R. Adams for

_The Tribune_, called "The Conning Tower," and Christopher Morley

for the New York _Evening Post_, called "The Bowling Green."

Perhaps the unsigned "Way of the World" in our _Morning Post_ is

the nearest London correlative.

These columns are managed with skill and catholicity, and they impart an

element of graciousness and fancy into what might otherwise be too

materialistic a budget. A journalist, like myself, is naturally

delighted to find editors and a vast public so true to their writing

friends. Very few English editors allow their subscribers the

opportunity of establishing such steady personal relations; and in

England, in consequence, the signed daily contribution from one literary

hand is very rare--to an American observer probably mysteriously so. The

daily cartoon is common with us; but in London, for example, I cannot

think of any similar literary feature that is signed in full. We have

C.E.B.'s regular verse in the _Evening News_ and "The Londoner's"

daily essay in the same paper, and various initials elsewhere; but, with

us, only the artists are allowed their names. Now, in America every

name, everywhere, is blazoned forth.

Whatever bushel measures may be used for in the United States the

concealing of light is no part of their programme.

Another feature of American daily journals comparatively unknown in

England is the so-called comic pictorial sequence. All the big papers

have from one to half a dozen of these sequences, each by a different

artist. Bud Fisher with "Mutt and Jeff" comes first in popularity, I

believe, and then there are his rivals and his imitators. Nothing more

inane than some of these series could be invented; and yet they persist

and could not, I am told, be dropped by any editor who thought first of

circulation.

After the individual contributions have been subtracted, all the

newspapers are curiously alike. The same reporters might be on every

one; the same sub-editors; the same composers of head-lines. If we think

of Americans as too capable of cynical levity it is largely because of

these head-lines, which are always as epigrammatic as possible, always

light-hearted, often facetious, and often cruel. An unfortunate woman's

failure at suicide after killing her husband was thus touched off in one

of the journals while I was in New York:

POOR SHOT AT HERSELF

BUT SUCCEEDS IN LODGING BULLET

IN SPOUSE.

When it comes to the choice of news, one cannot believe that American

editors are the best friends of their country. I am holding no brief for

many English editors; I think that our papers can be common too, and can

be too ready to take things by the wrong handle; but I think that more

vulgarising of life is, at present, effected by American journalists

than by English. There are, however, many signs that we may catch up.

Profusion is a characteristic of the American newspaper. There is too

much of everything. And when Sunday comes with its masses of reading

matter proper to the Day of Rest one is appalled. One thing is certain--

no American can find time to do justice both to his Sunday paper and his

Maker. It is principally on Sunday that one realises that if Matthew

Arnold's saying that every nation has the newspapers it deserves is

true, America must have been very naughty. How the Sunday editions could

be brought out while the paper-shortage was being discussed everywhere,

as it was during my visit, was a problem that staggered me. But that the

shortage was real I was assured, and jokes upon it even got into the

music halls: a sure indication of its existence. "If the scarcity of

paper gets more acute," I heard a comedian say, "they'll soon have to

make shoes of leather again."

But it is not only the Sunday papers that are so immense. I used to hold

the _Saturday Evening Post_ in my hands, weighed down beneath its

bulk, and marvel that the nation that had time to read it could have

time for anything else. The matter is of the best, but what would the

prudent, wise and hard-working philosopher who founded it so many years

ago--Benjamin Franklin--say if he saw its lure deflecting millions of

readers from the real business of life?

When we come to consider the American magazines--to which class the

_Saturday Evening Post_ almost belongs--and the English, there is

no comparison. The best American magazines are wonderful in their

quality and range, and we have nothing to set beside them. It is

astonishing to think how different, in the same country, daily and

monthly journalism can be. Omitting the monthly reviews,

_Blackwood_ is, I take it, our finest monthly miscellany; and all

of _Blackwood_ could easily and naturally be absorbed in one of the

American magazines and be illustrated into the bargain, and still leave

room for much more. And the whole would cost less! Why England is so

poorly and pettily served in the matter of monthly magazines is

something of a mystery; but part of the cause is the rivalry of the

papers, and part the smallness of our population. But I shall always

hold that we deserve more good magazines than we have now.

TREASURES OF ART

I was fortunate in being in New York when the Metropolitan Museum

celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its birth, for I was therefore

able to enjoy not only its normal treasures but such others as had been

borrowed for birthday presents, which means that I saw Mrs. H. E.

Huntington's Vermeer, as well as the supreme Marquand example of that

master; more than the regular wealth of Rembrandts, Manet's "Still

Life," Gauguin's "Women by the River," El Greco's "View of Toledo,"

Franz Hals' big jovial Dutchman from Mr. Harry Goldman's walls, and

Bellini's "Bacchanale"--to say nothing of the lace in galleries 18 and

19, Mr. Morgan's bronze Eros from Pompeii, and the various cases of

porcelain from a score of collections. But without extra allurements I

should have been drawn again and again to this magnificent museum.

Two of the principal metropolitan donors--Altman and Hearn--were the

owners of big dry goods stores, while Marquand, whose little Vermeer is

probably the loveliest thing in America, was also a merchant. In future

I shall look upon all the great emporium proprietors as worthy of

patronage, on the chance of their being also beneficent collectors of

works of art. This thought, this hope, is more likely to get me into a

certain Oxford Street establishment than all the rhetoric and special

pleading of Callisthenes.

The Frick Gallery was not accessible; but I was privileged to roam at

will both in Mr. Morgan's library and in Mr. H. E. Huntington's, in each

of which I saw such a profusion of unique and unappraisable autographs

as I had not supposed existed in private hands. Rare books any one with

money can have, for they are mostly in duplicate; but autographs and

"association" books are unique, and America is the place for them. I had

known that it was necessary to cross the Atlantic in order to see the

originals of many of the pictures of which we in London have only the

photographs. I knew that the bulk of the Lamb correspondence was in

America, and at Mr. Morgan's I saw the author's draft of the essay on

"Roast Pig," and at Mr. Newton's, in Philadelphia, the original of

"Dream Children," an even more desirable possession; I knew that America

had provided an eager home for everything connected with Keats and

Shelley and Stevenson; but it was a surprise to find at Mr. Morgan's so

wide a range of MSS., extending from Milton to Du Maurier, and from

Bacon to "Dorian Gray"; while at Mr. Huntington's I had in my hands the

actual foolscap sheets on which Heine composed his "Florentine Nights."

I ought, you say, to have known this before. Maybe. But that ignorance

in such matters is no monopoly of mine I can prove by remarking that

many an American collector with whom I have talked was unaware that the

library of Harvard University is the possessor of all the works of

reference--mostly annotated--which were used by Thomas Carlyle in

writing his "Cromwell" and his "Frederick the Great," and they were

bequeathed by him in his will to Harvard University because of his

esteem and regard for the American people, "particularly the more silent

part of them."

My hours in these libraries, together with a glimpse of the Widener room

at Harvard and certain booksellers' shelves, gave me some idea of what

American collectors have done towards making the New World a treasury of

the Old, and I realised how more and more necessary it will be, in the

future, for all critics of art in whatever branch, and of literature in

whatever branch, and all students even of antiquity, if they intend to

be thorough, to visit America. This I had guessed at, but never before

had known.

The English traveller lighting upon so many of the essentially English

riches as are conserved in American libraries, and particularly when he

has not a meagre share of national pride, cannot but pause to wonder how

it came about--and comes about--that so much that ought to be in its own

country has been permitted to stray.

In England collectors and connoisseurs are by no means rare. What, then,

were they doing to let all these letters of Keats and Shelley, Burns and

Byron, Lamb and Johnson--to name for the moment nothing else--find their

resting-place in America? The dollar is very powerful, I know, but

should it have been as pre-eminently powerful as this? Need it have

defeated so much patriotism?

Pictures come into a different category, for every artist painted more

than one picture. I have experienced no shade of resentment towards

their new owners in looking at the superb collections of old and new

foreign masters in the American public and private galleries; for so

long as there are enough examples of the masters to go round, every

nation should have a share. With MSS., however, it is different.

Facsimiles, such as the Boston Bibliographical Society's edition of

Lamb's letters, would serve for the rest of the world, and the originals

should be in their author's native land. But that is a counsel of

perfection. The only thing to do is to grin and bear it, and feel happy

that these unique possessions are preserved with such loving pride and

care. Any idea of retaliation on America on the part of England by

buying up the MSS. of the great American writers, such as Franklin and

Poe, Hawthorne and Emerson, Thoreau and Lowell, Holmes and Whitman, was

rendered futile by the discovery that Mr. Morgan possesses these too. I

had in his library all the Breakfast Table series in my hands, together

with a play by Poe not yet published.

MOUNT VERNON

Mention of the beautiful solicitude with which these treasures are

surrounded, suggests the reflection that the old country has something

to learn from the new in the matter of distinguished custodianship. We

have no place of national pilgrimage in England that is so perfect a

model as Washington's home at Mount Vernon. It is perhaps through lack

of a figure of the Washington type that we have nothing to compare with

it; for any parallel one must rather go to Fontainebleau; but certain

shrines are ours and none of them discloses quite such pious

thoroughness as this. When I think of the completeness of the

preservation and reconstruction of Mount Vernon, where, largely through

the piety of individuals, a thousand personal relics have been

reassembled, so that, save for the sightseers, this serene and simple

Virginian mansion is almost exactly as it was, I am filled with

admiration. For a young people largely in a hurry to find time to be so

proud and so reverent is a significant thing.

Nor is this spirit of pious reverence confined to national memorials.

Longfellow's Wayside Inn in Massachusetts, although still only a

hostelry, compares not unfavourably with Dove Cottage at Grasmere and

Carlyle's house in Chelsea. The preservation is more minute. But to

return to Mount Vernon, the orderliness of the place is not its least

noticeable feature. There is no mingling of trade with sentiment, as at

Stratford-on-Avon, for example. Within the borders of the estate

everything is quiet. I have never seen Americans in church (not, I

hasten to add, because they abstain, but because I did), but I am sure

that they could not, even there, behave more as if the environment were

sacred. To watch the crowds at Mount Vernon, and to contemplate the

massive isolated grandeur of the Lincoln Memorial now being finished at

Washington, is to realise that America, for all its superficial

frivolity and cynicism, is capable of a very deep seriousness.

VERS LIBRE

It would have been pedantic, while in America, to have abstained from an

effort at _vers libre_.

REVOLT

I had been to the Metropolitan Museum looking at beautiful things and

rejoicing in them.

And then I had to catch a train and go far into the country, to Paul

Smith's.

And as the light lessened and the brooding hour set in I looked out of

the window and reconstructed some of the lovely things I had seen--the

sculptures and the paintings, the jewels and the porcelain: all the fine

flower of the arts through the ages.

It seemed marvellous beyond understanding that such perfection could

exist, and I thought how wonderful it must be to be God and see His

creatures rising now and again to such heights.

And then I came to a station where there was to be a very long wait, and

I went to an inn for a meal.

It was a dirty neglected place, with a sullen unwashed man at the door,

who called raspingly to his wife within.

And when she came she was a slattern, with dishevelled hair and a soiled

dress and apron, and she looked miserable and worn out.

She prepared a meal which I could not eat, and when I went to pay for it

I found her sitting dejectedly in a chair looking with a kind of dumb

despair at the day's washing-up still to do.

And as I walked up and down the road waiting for the car I thought of

this woman's earlier life when she was happy.

I thought of her in her courtship, when her husband loved her and they

looked forward to marriage and he was tender and she was blithe.

They probably went to Coney Island together and laughed with the rest.

And it seemed iniquitous that such changes should come about and that

merry girls should grow into sluts and slovens, and ardent young

husbands should degenerate into unkempt bullies, and houses meant for

happiness should decay, and marriage promises all be forgotten.

And I felt that if the world could not be better managed than that I

never wanted to see any of God's artistic darlings at the top of their

form again and the Metropolitan Museum could go hang.

DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE

I believe that few statements about America would so surprise English

people as that it has beautiful architecture. I was prepared to find

Boston and Cambridge old-fashioned and homelike--Oliver Wendell Holmes

had initiated me; I had a distinct notion of the cool spaciousness of

the White House and the imposing proportions of the Capitol and, of

course, I knew that one had but to see the skyscrapers of New York to

experience the traditional repulsion! But of the church of St. Thomas on

Fifth Avenue I had heard nothing, nor of Mr. Morgan's exquisite library,

nor of the Grand Central terminus, nor of the Lincoln Memorial at

Washington, nor of the bland charm of Mount Vernon. Nor had I expected

to find Fifth Avenue so dignified and cordial a thoroughfare.

Even less was I prepared for such metal work and stone work as is to be

seen in some of the business houses--such as, for example, the new

Guaranty Trust offices, both on Broadway and in Fifth Avenue. Even the

elevators (for which we in England, in spite of our ancient lethargy,

have a one-syllable word) are often finished with charming taste.

Least of all did I anticipate the maturity of America's buildings. Those

serene facades on Beacon Street overlooking Boston Common, where the

Autocrat used to walk (and I made an endeavour to follow his identical

footsteps, for he was my first real author)--they are as satisfying as

anything in Georgian London. And I shall long treasure the memory of the

warm red brick and easy proportions of the Boston City Hall and Faneuil

Hall, and Independence Hall at Philadelphia seen through a screen of

leaves. But in England (and these buildings were English once) we still

have many old red brick buildings; what we have not is anything to

correspond with the spacious friendly houses of wood which I saw in the

country all about Boston and at Cambridge--such houses as that which was

Lowell's home--each amid its own greenery. Nowhere, however, did I see a

more comely manor house of the old Colonial style than Anthony Wayne's,

near Daylesford, in Pennsylvania. In England only cottages are built of

wood, and I rather think that there are now by-laws against that.

Not all the good country houses, big and little, are, however, old.

American architects in the past few years seem to have developed a very

attractive type of home, often only a cottage, and I saw a great number

of these on the slopes of the Hudson, all the new ones combining taste

with the suggestion of comfort. The conservation of trees wherever

possible is an admirable feature of modern suburban planning in America.

In England the new suburb too often has nothing but saplings. In

America, again, the houses, even the very small ones, are more often

detached than with us.

BOSTON

Once the lay-out of New York has been mastered--its avenues and numbered

cross streets--it is the most difficult city in the world in which to

lose one's way. But Boston is different. I found Boston hard to learn,

although it was a pleasant task to acquire knowledge, for I was led into

some of the quietest little Georgian streets I have ever been in, steep

though some of them were, and along one of the fairest of green walks--

that between the back of Beacon Street and the placid Charles.

Against Boston I have a certain grudge, for I could find no one to

direct me to the place where the tea was thrown overboard. But that it

was subjected to this indignity we may be certain--partly from the

testimony of subsequent events not too soothing to English feelings, and

partly from the unpopularity which that honest herb still suffers on

American soil. Coffee, yes; coffee at all times; but no one will take

any but the most perfunctory interest in the preparation of tea. I found

the harbour; I traversed wharf after wharf; but found no visible record

of the most momentous act of jettison since Jonah. In the top room,

however, of Faneuil Hall, in the Honourable Artillery Company's

headquarters, the more salient incidents of the struggle which followed

are all depicted by enthusiastic, if not too talented, painters; and I

saw in the distance the monument on Bunker's Hill.

My cicerone must be excused, for he was a Boston man, born and bred, and

I ought never to have put him to the humiliation of confessing his

natural ignorance. But the record is there, and legible enough. The

tablet (many kind correspondents have informed me since certain of these

notes appeared in the _Outlook_) is at 495 Atlantic Avenue, in the

water-front district, just a short walk from the South Station, and it

has the following inscription:

* * * * *

HERE FORMERLY STOOD

GRIFFIN'S WHARF

at which lay moored on Dec. 16, 1773, three British ships with cargoes

of tea. To defeat King George's trivial but tyrannical tax of three

pence a pound, about ninety citizens of Boston, partly disguised as

Indians, boarded the ships, threw the cargoes, three hundred and forty-

two chests in all, into the sea and made the world ring with the

patriotic exploit of the

BOSTON TEA PARTY

"No! ne'er was mingled such a draught

In palace, hall, or arbor,

As freemen brewed and tyrants quaffed

That night in Boston Harbor."

* * * * *

Boston has a remarkable art gallery and museum, notable for its ancient

Chinese paintings, its collection of Japanese prints--one of the best in

the world, I believe--and a dazzling wall of water-colours by Mr.

Sargent. It was here that I saw my first Winslow Homers--two or three

rapid sketches of fishermen in full excitement--and was conquered by his

verve and actuality. In the Metropolitan Museum in New York I found him

again in oils and my admiration increased. Surely no one ever can have

painted the sea with more vividness, power and truth! We have no example

of his work in any public gallery in London; nor have we anything by W.

M. Chase, Arthur B. Davies, Swain Gifford, J. W. Alexander, George

Inness, or De Forest Brush. It is more than time for another American

Exhibition. As it is, the only modern American artists of whom there is

any general knowledge in England are Mr. Sargent, Mr. Epstein and Mr.

Pennell, and the late E. A. Abbey, G. H. Boughton, and Whistler. Other

Americans painting in our midst are Mr. Mark Fisher, R.A., Mr. J. J.

Shannon, R.A., Mr. J. McLure Hamilton, and Mr. G. Wetherbee.

The Boston Gallery is the proud possessor of the rough and unfinished

but "speaking" likeness of George Washington by his predestined limner

Gilbert Stuart, and also a companion presentment of Washington's wife.

Looking upon this lady's countenance and watching a party of school

girls who were making the tour of the rooms, not uncomforted on their

arduous adventure by chocolate and other confections, it occurred to me

that if America increases her present love of eating sweets, due, I am

told, not a little to Prohibition, George Washington will gradually

disappear into the background and Martha Washington, who has already

given her name to a very popular brand of candy, will be venerated

instead, as the Sweet Mother of her Country.

An American correspondent sends me the following poem in order to

explain to me the deviousness of Boston's principal thoroughfare. The

poet is Mr. Sam Walter Foss:--

One day through the primeval wood

A calf walked home, as good calves should;

But made a trail all bent askew,

A crooked trail, as all calves do.

Since then two hundred years have fled,

And, I infer, the calf is dead.

But still he left behind his trail,

And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day

By a lone dog that passed that way;

And then a wise bell-wether sheep

Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,

And drew the flock behind him too,

As good bell-wethers always do.

And from that day o'er hill and glade

Through those old woods a path was made,

And many men wound in and out,

And dodged and turned and bent about,

And uttered words of righteous wrath

Because 'twas such a crooked path;

But still they followed--do not laugh--

The first migrations of that calf,

And through this winding wood-way stalked

Because he wabbled when he walked.

The forest path became a lane

That bent and turned and turned again;

This crooked lane became a road,

Where many a poor horse with his load

Toiled on beneath the burning sun,

And travelled some three miles in one.

And thus a century and a half

They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,

The road became a village street,

And then before men were aware,

A city's crowded thoroughfare,

And soon the central street was this

Of a renowned metropolis.

And men two centuries and a half

Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout

Followed the zigzag calf about;

And o'er his crooked journey went

The traffic of a continent.

A hundred thousand men were led

By one calf near three centuries dead.

They followed still his crooked way

And lost one hundred years a day;

For thus such reverence is lent

To well-established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach,

Were I ordained and called to preach.

For men are prone to go it blind

Along the calf-paths of the mind,

And work away from sun to sun

To do what other men have done.

They follow in the beaten track,

And out and in and forth and back

And still their devious course pursue,

To keep the paths that others do.

But how the wise old wood-gods laugh

Who saw the first primeval calf!

Ah, many things this tale might teach--But

I am not ordained to preach.

PHILADELPHIA

I was fortunate in the city over which William Penn, in giant effigy,

keeps watch and ward, in having as guide, philosopher and friend Mr. A.

Edward Newton, the Johnsonian, and the author of one of the best

examples of "amateur" literature that I know--"The Amenities of Book-

Collecting." Mr. Newton took me everywhere, even to the little

seventeenth-century Swedish church, which architecturally may be

described as the antipodes of Philadelphia's newer glory, the Curtis

Building, where editors are lodged like kings and can be attained to (if

at all) only through marble halls. We went to St. Peter's, where,

suddenly awaking during the sermon, one would think oneself to be in a

London city church, and to the Historical Museum, where I found among

the Quaker records many of my own ancestors and was bewildered amid such

a profusion of relics of Penn, Washington and Franklin. In the old

library were more traces of Franklin, including his famous electrical

appliance, again testifying to the white flame with which American hero-

worship can burn; and we found the sagacious Benjamin once more at the

Franklin Inn Club, where the simplicity of the eighteenth century

mingles with the humour and culture of the twentieth. We then drove

through several miles of Fairmount Park, stopping for a few minutes in

the hope of finding the late J. G. Johnson's Vermeer in the gallery

there; but for the moment it was in hiding, the walls being devoted to

his Italian pictures.

Finally we drew up at the gates of that strange and imposing Corinthian

temple which might have been dislodged from its original site and hurled

to Philadelphia by the first Quaker, Poseidon--the Girard College. This

solemn fane we were permitted to enter only on convincing the porter

that we were not ministers of religion--an easy enough task for Mr.

Newton, who wears with grace the natural abandon of a Voltairean, but a

difficult one for me. Why Stephen Girard, the worthy "merchant and

mariner" who endowed this institution, was so suspicious of the cloth,

no matter what its cut, I do not know; no doubt he had his reasons; but

his prejudices are faithfully respected by his janitor, whose eye is a

very gimlet of suspicion. However, we got in and saw the

philanthropist's tomb and his household effects behind those massive

columns.

That evening I spent in Mr. Newton's library among Blake and Lamb and

Johnson autographs and MSS., breaking the Tenth Commandment with a

recklessness that would have satisfied and delighted Stephen Girard's

gatekeeper; and the next day we were off to Valley Forge to see with

what imaginative thoughtfulness the Government has been transforming

Washington's camp into a national park and restoring the old landmarks.

It was a fine spring day and the woods were flecked with the white and

pink blossoms of the dogwood--a tree which in England is only an

inconspicuous hedgerow bush but here has both charm and importance and

some of the unexpectedness of a tropical growth. I wish we could

acclimatise it.

The memorial chapel now in course of completion on one of the Valley

Forge eminences seemed to me a very admirable example not only of modern

Gothic but of votive piety. And such a wealth of American symbolism

cannot exist elsewhere. But in the severe little cottage where

Washington made his headquarters, down by the stream, with all his

frugal campaigning furniture and accessories in their old places, I felt

more emotion than in the odour of sanctity. The simple reality of it

conquered the stained glass.

GENERAL REFLECTIONS

Looking back on it all I realise that America never struck me as a new

country, although its inhabitants often seemed to be a new people. The

cities are more mature than the citizens. New York, Chicago, Boston,

Philadelphia, Washington--all have an air of permanence and age. The

buildings, even the most fantastic, suggest indigenousness, or at least

stability; nor would the presence of more ancient structures increase

this effect. To the eye of the ordinary Englishman accustomed to work in

what we call the City, in Fleet Street, in the Strand, in Piccadilly, or

in Oxford Street, New York would not appear to be a younger place than

London, and Boston might easily strike him as older. Nor is London more

than a little older, except in spots, such as the Tower and the Temple

and the Abbey, and that little Tudor row in Holborn, all separated by

vast tracts of modernity. Indeed, I would almost go farther and say that

London sets up an illusion of being newer even than New York by reason

of its more disturbing street traffic both in the roads and on the

footways, and the prevalence of the gaily coloured omnibuses which

thunder along so many thoroughfares in notable contrast with the sedate

and sober vehicles that serve Fifth Avenue and are hardly seen

elsewhere.

Meanwhile an illusion of antiquity is set up by New York's habit of

commingling business houses and private residences, which surely belongs

to an older order of society. In London we have done away with such a

blend. Our nearest approach to Fifth Avenue is, I suppose, Regent

Street; but there are no mansions among the shops of Regent Street. Our

shops are there and our mansions are elsewhere, far away, in what we

call residential quarters--such as Park Lane, Queen's Gate, Mayfair,

the Bayswater Road, and Grosvenor Square. To turn out of Fifth Avenue

into the quiet streets where people live is to receive a distinct

impression of sedateness such as New York is never supposed to convey.

One has the same feeling in the other great American cities.

But when it comes to their inhabitants there are to the English eye

fewer signs of maturity. I have never been able to get rid of the idea

that every one I have met in America, no matter how grave a senior,

instead of being really and self-consciously in the thick of life, is

only getting ready to begin. Perhaps this is due in part to the

pleasure--the excitement almost--which American business men--and all

Americans are business men--take in their work. They not merely do it,

but they enjoy doing it and they watch themselves doing it. They seem to

have a knack of withdrawing aside and observing themselves as from the

stalls, not without applause. In other words, they dramatise

continually. Now, one does not do this when one is old--it is a childish

game--and it is another proof that they are younger than we, who do not

enjoy our work, and indeed, most of us, are ashamed of it and want the

world to believe that we live like the lilies on private means.

Similarly, many Americans seem, when they talk, to be two persons: one

the talker, and the other the listener charmed by the quality of his

discourse. There is nothing detrimental in such duplicity. Indeed, I

think I have a very real envy of it. But one of the defects of the

listening habit is perhaps to make them too rhetorical, too verbose. It

is odd that the nation that has given us so much epigrammatic slang and

the telegraph and the telephone and the typewriter should have so little

of what might be called intellectual short-hand. But so it is. Too many

Americans are remorseless when they are making themselves clear.

Yet the passion for printed idiomatic sententiousness and arresting

trade-notices is visible all the time. You see it in the newspapers and

in the shops. I found a children's millinery shop in New York with this

laconic indication of its scope, in permanent letters, on the plate-

glass window: "Lids for Kids." A New York undertaker, I am told, has

affixed to all his hearses the too legible legend: "You may linger, but

I'll get you yet."

When it comes to descriptive new words, coined rapidly to meet

occasions, we English are nowhere compared with the Americans. Could

there be anything better than the term "Nearbeer" to reveal at a blow

the character of a substitute for ale? I take off my hat, too, to

"crape-hanger," which leaves "kill-joy" far in the rear. But "optience"

for a cinema audience, which sees but does not hear, though ingenious,

is less admirable.

Although I found the walls of business offices in New York and elsewhere

decorated with pithy counsel to callers, and discouragements to

irrelevance, such as "Come to the point but don't camp on it," "To hell

with yesterday," and so forth, I am very doubtful if with all these

suggestions of practical address and Napoleonic efficiency the American

business man is as quick and decisive as ours can be. There is more

autobiography talked in American offices than in English; more getting

ready to begin.

I have, however, no envy of the American man's inability to loaf and

invite his soul, as his great democratic poet was able to do. I think

that this unfamiliarity with armchair life is a misfortune. That article

of furniture, we must suppose, is for older civilisations, where men

have either, after earning the right to recline, taken their ease

gracefully, or have inherited their fortune and are partial to idleness.

It consorts ill with those who are still either continually and

restlessly in pursuit of the dollar or are engaged in the occupation of

watching dollars automatically arrive.

One of the things, I take it, for Americans to learn is how to transform

money into a friend. So many men who ought to be quietly rejoicing in

their riches seem still to be anxious and acquisitive; so many men who

have become suddenly wealthy seem to be allowing their gains to ruin

their happiness. For the nation's good nearly every one, I fancy, has

too much money.

My experience is that England has almost everything to learn from

America in the matter of hotels. I consider American second and third-

class hotels to be better in many ways than our best. Every American

restaurant, of each grade, is better than the English equivalent; the

appointments are better, the food is served with more distinction and

often is better too. When it comes to coffee, there is no comparison

whatever: American coffee is the best in the world. Only quite recently

has the importance of the complete suite entered the intelligence of the

promoters of English hotels, and in myriads of these establishments,

called first class, there is still but one bathroom to twenty rooms.

Heating coils and hot and cold water in the rooms are even more rare: so

rare as to be mentioned in the advertisements. Telephones in the rooms

are rarer. In too many hotels in England there is still no light at the

head of the bed. But we have certain advantages. For example, in English

restaurants there is always something on the table to eat at once--

_hors d'oeuvres_ or bread and butter. In America there is too often

nothing ready but iced water--an ungenial overture to any feast--and you

must wait until your order has been taken. Other travellers, even

Americans, have agreed with me that it would be more comfortable if the

convention which decrees that the waiter shall bring everything together

could be overruled. Something "to go on with" is a great ameliorative,

especially when one is hungry and tired.

In thus commending American hotels over English it is, however, only

right to admit that the American hotels are very much more expensive.

While on the subject of eating, I would say that for all their notorious

freedoms Americans have a better sense of order than we. Their policemen

may carry their batons drawn, and even swing them with a certain

insolent defiance or even provocation, but New York goes on its way with

more precision and less disturbance than London, and every one is

smarter, more alert. The suggestion of a living wage for all is

constant. It is indeed on this sense of orderliness that the success of

certain of the American time-saving appliances is built. The Automat

restaurants, for example, where the customer gets all his requirements

himself, would never do in London. The idea is perfect; but it requires

the co-operation of the customer, and that is what we should fail to

provide. The spotless cleanliness and mechanical exactitude of these

places in New York would cease in London, and gradually they would

decline and then disappear. At heart, we in England dislike well-managed

places. Nor can I see New York's public distribution of hot water

adopted in London. Such little geysers as expel steam at intervals

through the roadway of Fifth Avenue will never, I fear, be found in

Regent Street or Piccadilly. Our communism is very patchy.

There are some unexpected differences between America and England. It is

odd, for instance, to find a nation from whom we get most of our tobacco

and who have the reputation of even chewing cigars, with such strict

rules against smoking. In the Music Halls, which are, as a rule, better

than ours, smoking is permitted only in certain parts. Public decorum

again is, I should say, more noticeable in an American than an English

city, and yet both in San Francisco and New York I dined in restaurants

--not late--between 7 and 8--and not furtive hole-in-corner places,--

where girls belonging to the establishment, wearing almost nothing at

all, performed the latest dances, with extravagant and daring variations

of them, among the tables. In London this kind of thing is unknown. In

Paris it occurs only in the night cafes. It struck me as astonishing--

and probably not at all to the good--that it should be an ordinary

dinner accompaniment.

I was asked while I was in America to set down some of the chief things

that I missed. I might easily have begun with walking-sticks, for until

I reached New York I seemed to be the only man in America who carried

one, although a San Francisco friend confessed to sometimes "wearing a

cane" on Sundays. I missed a Visitors' Book either at the British

Embassy in Washington or at the White House. After passing through

India, where one's first duty is to enter one's name in these volumes,

it seemed odd that the same machinery of civility should be lacking. I

missed any system of cleaning boots during the night, in the hotels; but

I soon became accustomed to this, and rather enjoyed visiting the "shine

parlours," in one of which was this crisp notice: "If you like our work,

tell your friends; if you don't like it, tell us." I missed gum-chewing.

But it was on returning to England that I began really to take notice.

Then I found myself missing America's cleanliness, America's despatch,

its hotel efficiency, its lashings of cream, its ice on every hand. All

this at Liverpool! I missed later the petrol fountains all about the

roads, a few of which I had seen in India, at which the motorist can

replenish; but these surely will not be long in coming. I don't want

England to be Americanised; I don't want America to cease to be a

foreign country; but there are lessons each of us can learn.

If I were an American, although I travelled abroad now and then (and I

hold that it is the duty of a man to see other lands but live in his

own) I should concentrate on America. It is the country of the future. I

am glad I have seen it and now know something--however slight--about it

at first hand. I made many friends there and amassed innumerable

delightful memories. But what is the use of eight weeks? I am ashamed

not to have gone there sooner, and humiliated by the brevity of my stay.

I have had the opportunity only to lift a thousand curtains, get a

glimpse of the entertainment on the other side and drop them again. I

should like to go there every other year and have time: time to make the

acquaintance of a naturalist and learn from him the names of birds and

trees and flowers; time to loiter in the byways; time to penetrate into

deeper strata where intimacies strike root and the real discoveries are

made; time to discern beneath the surface, so hard and assured,

something fey, something wistful, the sense of tears.

INDEX

Adirondacks, etc.

Agra and its Fort

Aitken, E. H., his three books

Akbar

America, its democracy

its humour

its slang

its trains

its women

its newspapers

its MSS.

its hotels

its maturity

American painters in England

Americans, at home and abroad

Americans, their clothes

their physiognomy

their disturbing wealth

Aquariums

Architecture in America

"Association" books

Baker, Mr. Herbert

Bam Bahadur, that great hunter

Baseball and cricket

Beecher, Henry Ward

Benares

Berkeley University

Bernier on the Moguls

Betel-nut chewing

Birds in India

Blackbuck, the agile

Bombay--Towers of Silence

Boston

Butler, H.E., Sir Harcourt

Calcutta--the piano-carriers

its snake charmers

and the Maidan

and its English buildings

its old cemetery

Charnock, Job

Chicago, its hospitable policeman

its pictures

Cinema, the

Cobb, Mr. Irvin

Comparisons between America and England

Coney Island

Cow-worship in India

Cricket and baseball

Curzon, Lord, his preservation of ancient buildings

Dances in India and Japan

Delhi--the camel omnibuses

its architecture

and the Mutiny

Fort

Dickens, Charles, presentation copies

"Eha," his three books

Elephanta, caves of

Fakirs in India

Fatehpur-Sikri

Faneuil Hall, Boston

Fifth Avenue

Foss, Mr. Samuel W., his Boston poem

Franklin, Benjamin

Fujiyama

Funerals in India and England

Ganges, the

Geisha dances

Gilbert, Mr. Cass

Girard, Stephen

Goschen, Lord, wounds the tiger

Hakone, Lake

Hawking

Herford, Mr. Oliver

Hindus, the, and animals

Hokusai

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Hong-Kong, funeral at

Honolulu

Hooghli, the

Hotels in America

Humayun's Tomb

Huntington, Mr. H. E.

Jahan, Shah, his buildings

Jains, the, their preservation of life

Japan--its lack of idlers

and animal life

its women

its American reading

Japanese, their small stature

materialism

public manners

their gold teeth

Journalism in America

Katsuragava rapids

Keats' _Lamia_, 1820

Kesteven, Sir Charles, his library

Khan, Sir Umar Hayat

Kohinoor, the

Kutb Minar, the

Kyoto, its temples

Lake Placid Club

Lamb, Mr. A. M., his distress at Honolulu

Charles, first editions

manuscripts

Landor, Walter Savage

Lavater abroad

Lincoln Memorial

Liston, Lt.-Col. Glen

Lucknow and the Mutiny

its delectability

Lutyens, Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A., goes hawking

and Imperial Delhi

and the priests

and the divers

hunts the tiger

Marquis, Mr. Don

Moguls, the

Mohammedan customs

priests

Monkeys

Morgan, Mr. J. Pierpont

Mount Vernon

Mutiny, the

Myanoshita

Nautch, the

Nawanagar, the Jam of

New or Imperial Delhi

New York, its skyscrapers

its buildings

its aquarium

its shops

its dances

its sky signs

its pictures

its MSS.

its maturity

Newspapers in America

Newton, Mr. A. Edward

Otome Pass

Painters, American, in England

Parsees, the

Peacock Throne, the

Philadelphia

Pictures in America

Prince of Wales in New York

Prohibition

Pronunciation in America

Ranjitsinhji, Prince

Rickshaws

Roosevelt, Theodore, his Memorial Road

"Rose Aylmer"

Ruth, "Babe"

San Francisco

Saranac

_Saturday Evening Post_, the

Scott, Mr. A. P., his house

Sculpture in America

Shaw, Mr. Bernard

Simplified spelling

Skyscrapers

Skysigns

Slang in America

Snake-poison antidotes

St. Gaudens, Augustus

Stevenson, Robert Louis

Swamp-deer hunting

Swan, Mr. Thomas, his despair at Honolulu

Taj Mahal, the

Talmadge, Constance

Norma

Tavernier on the Moguls

Theatre, the, in Japan

Tiger hunt, a

Tinney, Frank

Tokio, its dress

its theatre

Tolstoi, Count Leo

Towers of Silence

Townsend, Joe, his ballad

Valley Forge

Venice and Benares

Vers Libre

Vultures

Washington

George

Martha

Wayne, Anthony

Wayside Inn, the

Wheeler, Mr. Charles Stetson, his story

Women in America

in Japan

Woolworth Building, the

Yamaguchi, Madame

Yokohama

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